Where in the World is Houghton Mifflin Company?
Rumors have been blowing around in the windy Back Bay streets by their corporate headquarters for weeks. In 2002 the company was purchased for about $1.7 by three private equity firms, two of Boston, Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital, and the Blackstone Group of London and New York from the then French owners, Vivendi Universal. The publisher came back to the Boston roots they put down in the mid-eighteen hundreds. Today a deal was reached that will put Houghton Mifflin in the hands of the Irish based Riverdeep for a mere $3.4 billion. When the deal is finalized the new joined company is expected to operate under the name Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep Group PLC, though it’s not quite clear if subsidiaries Houghton Mifflin Company and Riverdeep will continue to operate independently. Liability companies and numbers in the billions can get boring real quick. The new company will be about more than numbers and finance structure – it merges the publisher of the American Heritage Diction
