Mergers, there be mergers everywhere. Reported in PW Daily yesterday (but we neglected to mention till now) is that Vista International, a specialist in comprehensive back-office software for publishers, and Ingenta, focused on online publishing technology, are merging to create Publishing Technologies PLC, an international firm offering a wide range of publishing-specific software products to the industry, effective this month.
Meanwhile, Wiley released a statement that it has finalized the acquisition of the outstanding shares of Blackwell Publishing, one of the world’s foremost academic and professional publishers. The purchase price of 572 million pounds was financed with a combination of debt and cash. Together, the two companies will publish approximately 1,250 scholarly peer-reviewed journals (over 1 million pages) and an extensive collection of books with global appeal.