Journalists from the Financial Times and Reuters have been at briefings given by Thomson Corporation chief Richard Harrington, and both have come up with different angles on what he says.
The Financial Times majored on the fact that Harrington has put up a "for sale" sign on the Education publishing division, citing "inertia" and "a funding problem" in the educational system when it comes to adopting e-learning tools.
He said he wanted to wait a couple of years to see if the division could be transformed from a print-based organisation into an online-facing business, something which has been achieved with the company's three other divisions - legal and regulatory, financial services and STM.
Reuters accentuated the positive side of things - saying the company is in the early stages of exploring expansion into a new business line, probably beginning with a small or medium sized acquisition.
The education division accounted for $2.32bn of the group's total $8.7bn revenues last year. Disposing of all, or parts, of it could free up a lot of cash for acquisitions.
Harrington said that the industry sectors in which it is most interested in offering information services are: engineering, petrochemical, aerospace, automotive and the insurance industries.
No comments:
Post a Comment