Subject: EBSCO Industries Acquires Lange & Springer Subscription Agency
From: Barbara Schleihagen (Eblida@nblc.nl)
Date: pe 09 heinä 1999 - 11:39:44 EEST
EBSCO Press Release of 26 June 1999 at:
http://www.ebsco.com/ess/whatsnew/lange.stm
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
EBSCO Industries Acquires Lange & Springer Subscription Agency/Customer
Support, Service and Publisher Relations Increased Worldwide
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
EBSCO Industries has acquired the Berlin-based Lange & Springer
subscription agency and mail order bookseller.
Lange & Springer was a subsidiary of the scientific publishing group
Springer Berlin/Heidelberg/New York, part of Bertelsmann Professional
Information. Employing some 100 staff members,Lange & Springer operates in
Germany, Italy and Eastern Europe distributing scientific books, journals
and electronic media to libraries in the public and private sectors. EBSCO
will integrate the Lange & Springer operations and customer contacts into
its existing network of seven European offices as part of its large EBSCO
Subscription Services division.
"Adding a major European agency such as this to our existing business will
enable us to strengthen our global activities," said EBSCO Industries
President J.T. Stephens. "EBSCO already has a major presence in Europe and
the inclusion of Lange & Springer into our family only solidifies the
amount of customer service, support, and publisher relations and
communications we can bring our customers worldwide."
"This sale is the consequence of an ongoing portfolio review identifying
core and non-core businesses which we have been conducting since
Bertelsmann acquired Springer," said Professor/Dr. Jürgen Richter, chairman
of the Supervisory Board of the Springer group and president and CEO of
Bertelsmann
Professional Information. "EBSCO is the ideal company to purchase Lange &
Springer. It will provide the scale and technological skills which Lange &
Springer needs in order to survive in this increasingly competitive
business. It was particularly important to us that the new owner will
maintain the integrity of Lange & Springer and keep its Berlin location."
According to Professor/Dr. Dietrich Götze, managing director and spokesman
for Springer management, "The main reasons for us topart with Lange &
Springer are the continuing globalization and increased technological
requirements in both the publishing and agency businesses." He emphasized
that agencies must follow the trend of the publishing industry and strive
for global scale so they can invest in Internet-based, electronic systems.
The massive investments required would have necessitated Lange & Springer to
grow substantially, intensifying competition with the large agencies which
are among Springer-Verlag's most important customers.
"Withdrawing from this business circumvents this conflict and maintains our
good relationships with all the major agencies," headded.
As the global information industry has been struggling with managing a
diverse collection of both print and electronic titles, EBSCO has been
developing access and management solutions for its customers, according to
Stephens. "With Lange & Springer and EBSCO working together we can maximize
the potential of the World Wide Web to make information access as simple as
it has traditionally been with print," he said. "Services such as our
electronic journals system, EBSCO Online, and EBSCOhost, our online
reference database system, will enable us to provide the full text of most
electronically produced journals from throughout the world. Our combined
experience of working with publishers and the information marketplace will
be of benefit for our customers as we move forward in the Information Age."
The international scientific publishing group Springer publishes more than
2,000 new books and approximately 500 journals annually, 400 of which are
also in electronic form. Besides the German-speaking markets, the U.S. and
Asia are the main markets for the publishing house's programs, 60 percent
of which are in English. In addition to the headquarters in Berlin and
Heidelberg, there are subsidiaries in New York, London, Tokyo, Paris,
Barcelona, Milan, Hong Kong and Singapore.
With 32 full-service offices strategically located throughout six
continents, EBSCO Subscription Services is the world's largest provider of
subscription management services for libraries and organizations. By
working with more than 49,000 publishers around the globe, EBSCO can place
subscription orders for more than 260,000 journal and magazine title
listings in the company's comprehensive database. EBSCO customers receive
the benefits of electronic ordering, claiming, invoicing and account
analysis as well as personal, professional service provided by the company's
global Regional Office network and through International Headquarters,
located near Birmingham, Ala., U.S.A.
###
Released: June 26, 1999
This archive was generated by hypermail 2a24 : ke 24 huhti 2024 - 01:20:16 EEST