McGraw-Hill, the international educational publisher based in New York, is to change private equity ownership as the result of a deal by Platinum Equity to buy the publisher from Apollo Global Management for $4.5bn. Apollo bought McGraw-Hill for $2.4bn in 2013 when the company had revenues of $2bn but these have now dropped to $1.6bn with earnings of $373m. The company has, however, moved sharply towards digital which now comprises 60% of revenue.
McGraw textbooks and edtech products have a global reach serving, millions of students across 100 countries and in 80 languages. Education has been acutely disrupted by the pandemic which has boosted the demand for online tools.
The deal is expected to complete this summer and comes a year after a failed merger between McGraw-Hill and Cengage, due to regulatory opposition.
When Apollo bought the education division of McGraw-Hill, the parent company changed its name to McGraw Hill Financial Inc. In 2016, it changed its name again, to S&P Global Inc.
In November 2020, S&P Global agreed to acquire IHS Markit – the business information, publishing and analytics company – in a $44bn deal which will give S&P shareholders almost 68% of the merged company.
