Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Farewell To Greenwood

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has no need of Greenwood Publishing, so they've cut it loose and left it to sink into the sea off the coast of Connecticut.

Once the Greenwood titles were sold off, of what use was the office and its employees? ABC-CLIO took over the license for all imprints, and it has the right to publish Greenwood titles, so thanks Greenwood but you're a synergy that's been realized to lower costs.

The massive merger of Riverdeep and Houghton Mifflin and Harcourt requires many, many synergies to become profitable, or the little minnow that swallowed a mighty whale will surely choke to death.

Synergies will be realized shortly before Christmas as 150 people are let go, and ABC-CLIO doesn't have any plans to use the office space. They say they can offer jobs to maybe about half of the employees who are getting the sack, but they'd have to agree to swim over to Colorado or California, and take a chance that they won't become ABC-CLIO synergies in the future.

What comes next, given the tight credit markets and the plans to heavily leverage the HMRiverdeep congolomerate?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Oh, how we have missed your minnow series! I image that HMH will use the economic situation to spring more surprises on employees right before Christmas.

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