Bloomsbury Publishing plc, the listed UK publisher of Harry Potter, has acquired the assets of Zed Books, of London, publisher of academic and non-fiction titles.
Bloomsbury paid an initial £875k in cash, with a further £875k payable within a year. Zed will bring £0.8m in revenue to Bloomsbury, with profit expected in Year 2. It will operate within the company’s academic and professional division, and augments its international relations and African studies portfolio.
Bloomsbury Publishing is a leading independent publishing house founded by CEO Nigel Newton in 1986. It now has subsidiaries in the US, Australia, and India. Its four divisions include Bloomsbury Academic and Professional, Bloomsbury Content Services, Bloomsbury Adult Publishing and Bloomsbury Children’s Publishing.
It has a market cap of some £140m and last year made EBITDA of £18m on revenue of £163m. Its steady growth, which originally came from its longterm rights to the Harry Potter books, has increasingly depended on its academic and professional publishing and digital services.
