Friday, May 21, 2010

Fighting Concentration in Educational Publishing

The Shuttleworth Foundation 2009 Annual Report:

During 2008 it came to the Foundation’s attention that the Competition Commission (in South Africa) would review a further merger proposal involving Maskew Miller Longman. This followed the action in 2007, when the Foundation successfully intervened in a multinational merger between Pearson PLC and Harcourt Education International, thereby helping to prevent the integration of local subsidiaries Maskew Miller Longman and Heinemann Publishing. The Foundation’s intervention centred on our concern that such a merger would have a negative impact on local education by driving greater concentration of what is already an over-concentrated education material publishing industry. As a result Maskew Miller Longman and Heinemann were instructed to run their operations separately.

With support form the Open Society Institute, the Foundation intervened in this second merger proposal involving Maskew Miller Longman and Heinemann. As a result, the ruling that Maskew Miller Longman and Heinemann should not join operations remains in force.

Kind of hard to imagine a US foundation doing the same thing.

Note that I have no direct connection to the Shuttleworth Foundation.

No comments: