Bloomsbury Publishing buys US publisher for £65m

Bloomsbury Publishing said on Wednesday that it has bought The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group's academic publishing business for $83m (£65m).

The Harry Potter publisher said this was its biggest acquisition to date and "significantly" accelerates and strengthens its academic publishing in North America and Bloomsbury Digital Resources (BDR).

Founded in the US in 1949, privately-owned Rowman & Littlefield publishes more than 40,000 academic titles. The deal does not include Rowman & Littlefield's Globe Pequot lists (with the exception of the Applause and Backbeat imprints), its trade publishing arm, Sundance-Newbridge, its K-8 education business or National Book Network (NBN).

Bloomsbury chief executive Nigel Newton said: "This acquisition is a game-changer for Bloomsbury. Rowman & Littlefield is one of the few independent US academic publishers of such scale and it is great that our discussions with Jed Lyons have led to this acquisition.

"Their 40,000 academic titles added to ours will make us a significant US academic publisher, growing Bloomsbury's academic and digital publishing presence in North America, opening new markets and publishing areas to Bloomsbury, and is a key milestone in the delivery of our long-term growth strategy.

"Following the exceptional performance in our consumer division in our recently announced preliminary results, the acquisition accelerates our non-consumer division, underlining our portfolio of portfolios strategy."