The von Holtzbrinck Group, which has organized its international publishing operations along geographic lines, will now operate along publishing segments. Under the restructuring, announced today, Macmillan U.S. CEO John Sargent has been appointed head of the global trade division, while Annette Thomas, CEO of Macmillan UK, will lead the global science and education division. A third unit will be Holtzbrinck Media.

The restructuring becomes effective July 2. In his new role, Sargent will give up oversight for Macmillan’s college operations and in addition to being in charge of Macmillan’s U.S. trade operation will be responsible for Holtzbrinck’s German, U.K. and Australian houses. The global science & education division will consist of Nature Publishing Group, Macmillan Education, Macmillan Higher Education and Palgrave Macmillan and will also include Digital Science, Digital Education and Macmillan New Ventures.

Sargent was coming back from a Holtzbrinck meeting this morning and was unavailable for comment. In a statement on the restructuring, Holtzbrinck head Stefan von Holtzbrinck said, "This reorganization will allow us to take even more advantage of the converging forces of digitization and globalization by providing us with increased focus and flexibility: There will be more opportunities for cooperation in exciting projects around the globe. The networking of our talents will become seamless by design. Our authors, scientists, teachers, readers and users, who are at the centre of our endeavor, will benefit from a broader marketing and distribution network as well as from technology investments in a strategically joint up way."

The executive board, which includes Sargent and Thomas, remains unchanged as does the branding of the Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck.

The privately-held von Holtzbrinck group operates in more than 80 countries and has not yet released 2011 results. In 2010, the company had sales of 2.25 billion euros with 27.7% coming from North America, the second largest segment behind Germany. The trade group, (called fiction and nonfiction) had 2010 revenue of 683.7 million euros, while the education and science group had revenue of 827.5 million, and digital media had 213.7 million euros in sales. The newspaper and magazine division was not part of the restructuring and had sales of 539.3 million