Academic and reference publisher Cengage Learning announced a restructuring Wednesday afternoon that will combine its two operating units into one group. Currently Cengage is divided into the academic and professional group, home to educational/professional publishers such as South-Western, Delmar, Wadsworth and Brooks/Cole, and the Gale library/reference group. The company’s international operations will also be brought into the group.
The consolidation will allow for greater synergies, more focused technology investments and more innovation, the company said. As a result of the changes, Patrick Sommers will retire as the president of Gale at the end of July and Ron Mobed, president of the academic and professional group will leave the company. Ron Dunn will continue as CEO of Cengage. In a statement, a company spokesperson said the consolidation will result in some job losses. “Whenever we integrate businesses, we find overlapping and redundant functions, and that will undoubtedly be the case with the integration of Gale and APG. However, we do not anticipate significant layoffs,” the statement said.
Under the reorganization, the departments of the different companies will be combined, although the brands will remain distinct. The academic and professional group is by far the larger of the two units. For the nine months ended March 31, the academic and professional group had sales of $1.27 billion, while Gale had sales of $197 million; revenue at both groups was down slightly from the comparable period in 2009.
