Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer's mission is to provide comprehensive, authoritative, and reliable print and electronic products and services that help professionals reduce costs, boost productivity, and increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their work processes. Key Dates: Nicolaas Samson leaves civil service to run his eponymous publishing business on a full-time basis. Samson publishing merges with A.W. Sijthoff to form the Information and Communications Union (ICU). Kluwer merges with Wolters-Samson to fend off hostile takeover bid by Elsevier; the new entity is called Wolters Kluwer. Wolters Kluwer spends $1.9 billion for tax and business materials publisher CCH, Inc. Wolters Kluwer NV is one of the worldwide leaders in publishing, and the Netherlands' second largest publisher after Reed Elsevier, with US$6.03 billion in sales in 1998. Under the slogan 'Creating Value for Professionals,' Wolters Kluwer and its subsidiaries are primarily active in the specialized publishing markets of business, law, tax, medicine, education, science, professional training, and electronic publishing, while maintaining only a limited presence in general consumer and trade publishing. With operations in various European countries, the United States, Canada, and several Asian nations, Wolters Kluwer has pursued a growth strategy dominated by strategic acquisitions, though it has begun to focus on deriving more of its growth from the development of its existing properties. The modern incarnation of Wolters Kluwer of the 1990s traces its origins to four Dutch publishing families of the 19th century: Wolters, Noordhoff, Kluwer, and Samson. During that century, the Industrial Revolution, combined with constitutional and legal reforms that more closely united the formerly loose association of Dutch provinces, prompted a growing demand for educational and informational literature. Many publishers, print shops, and typographers responded to this demand, numbering some 600 by the end of the 1880s. Until the 20th century, however, publishing in the Netherlands remained the province of small-scale, often family-run businesses with fewer than ten employees. The first large publishing house, the Elsevier Bookselling and Publishing Company, appeared in Amsterdam in 1881, but remained an exception for some time to come. J.B. Wolters founded the Schoolbook publishing house--later to be called the J.B. Wolters Publishing Company--in the provincial capital city of Groningen in 1836, providing educational and instructional materials for a country just beginning the transformation to a modern industrial economy. Wolters was childless, and upon his death in 1860, his brother-in-law, E.B. ter Horst, took over the company. Under ter Horst the company began a period of expansion, adding a printing shop and bindery to its editorial functions. Ter Horst brought his son, E.B. ter Horst, Jr., into the company in 1885, and ter Horst, Jr., was made a partner in the company eight years later. Disagreements between father and son led the senior ter Horst to leave the company soon afterwards. Ter Horst, Jr., led the company until his death in 1905. By then, the company's fortunes had fallen, to the point where the heirs to the company, ter Horst, Jr.'s half-brothers F.R. and A. ter Horst, considered closing the company. Instead, the brothers reorganized the company from a partnership into a corporation, and for the first time brought in directors from outside the family. F.R. ter Horst, formerly a banking professional, became the company's managing director, overseeing the editorial portions of its textbook and academic publishing activities from his home in The Hague. The company's production facilities remained in Groningen. In 1915 a separate office was opened in The Hague. Two years later Dr. Anthony M.H. Schepman, who was married to a niece of F.R. ter Horst, joined the J.B. Wolters Company and was soon named a director of the company, a position he held for more than 40