Thursday, August 05, 2010

Thomson Reuters buys Canada Law Book

[This post has been updated] Thomson Reuters has acquired Canada Law Book, a division of The Cartwright Group Ltd., which also owns the b2b magazine publisher CLB Media. According to a press release, Canada Law Book will now be aligned with Thomson Reuters' Carswell division, headquartered in Toronto. Both companies provide legal scholarship and information.

Don Van Meer, the president and CEO of Carswell said
“We are confident our combined strengths will provide true value to our customers, and we are committed to maintaining and enriching the high-quality product offerings our customers have come to expect from us and from Canada Law Book.”
Canada Law Book produces various publications across 36 topics of legal information and has a reputation for high editorial standards. 
According to an August 3 blog posting on the legal publishing site SLAW, the merger was more or less dictated by the decline of the core business activities of the major legal publishers in an era when digital delivery is becoming the norm.  However
As for the rumoured acquisition of Canada Law Book by Carswell Thomson, it would spike Carswell Thomson’s revenue in the short term, but add nothing significant to the business in the long term. The product offerings of the two companies are too similar to make a difference.
Terms of the deal were not announced, nor was there an indication of the impact of the sale on the magazine division, [Update:which was apparently not included, and it appears that, included in the deal were four CLB titles, including Canadian Lawyer,Canadian Lawyer InHouse, Canadian Lawyer 4Students and the weekly Ontario legal paper Law Times.] [Update: (Thomson owns  the legal magazine Lexpert.)] CLB Media publishes more than 20 magazines such as Canadian Lawyer, Law Times as well as a portfolio of security, industrial/manufacturing and automotive titles.

The Cartwright Group also owns Dye & Durham, which owns Basics and is a supplier to office supplies, furniture, promotional and legal products as well as recruitment firms Kent Legal and RainMaker.

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2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This is really quite surprising. The sale of CLB Media wouldn't be much of a surprise - but this - I think was unexpected. If the Cartwright Group parted with Canada Law Book, I think we can all expect to hear about the sale of CLB Media very soon. As I understand it, Cartwright Group already parted with Dye and Durham just a short while ago.

I don't know, but it looks to me like the Cartwright Group is "getting out of Dodge" while they still can. Who knows...maybe they'll start dabbling in the oil and gas industry next?...

10:32 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

The sale to Carswell Thomson Reuters does include Canadian Lawyer, Canadian Lawyer InHouse, Canadian Lawyer 4Students, and Law Times and the pubs' online and digital products.

1:56 pm  

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