 | | |
 | | |
 |  | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
 | | |
TECHNOLOGY EXCHANGE
Thomson Acquires McGraw-Hill
Lifetime Learning Assets
Thomson Continues Expansion of its Enterprise-Wide, End-to-End Learning Solutions - Creating World's Largest Library of Courseware
Naperville, Ill., June 19, 2002- The Thomson Corporation (NYSE, TSX: TOC), the world's largest provider of corporate and professional learning solutions, today announced that it has acquired select courseware, technology and e-learning assets from McGraw-Hill's Lifetime Learning division, part of The McGraw-Hill Companies (NYSE: MHP). The acquisition adds significant branded and mission critical content to the Thomson portfolio of offerings, creating the largest and most comprehensive set of enterprise-wide, end-to-end learning solutions available globally. Specific terms of the deal were not disclosed.
"When you serve thousands of the world's leading businesses, including the vast majority of the Fortune 500, it's clear that employees' knowledge and skills have become a company's most critical competitive advantage. We are living in a knowledge economy where a corporation's ability to accelerate the development of human capital in complete alignment with business objectives is vital to success," said Alex Brnilovich, president and CEO of Thomson Enterprise Learning. "In adding this leading content and branded courses to our enterprise solutions, we further expand our ability to meet customers' demand for the very best learning content integrated into a more strategic enterprise-wide learning program. We are turning corporate learning into corporate empowerment."
The addition of these leading courses - encompassing everything from improving sales performance and call center operations to helping ensure workplace compliance - represents the continued focus Thomson takes in providing corporate clients with new tools for driving growth and achieving competitive advantage.
The Thomson branded learning approach includes well-known authors, academics, and business leaders who develop timely, issue-oriented courses. The result is learners more engaged in content that addresses relevant and mission crucial business needs in an innovative, cohesive and high quality fashion. For example, the new content incorporates such subject matter
Experts as:
- Avaya for call center and CRM contact center courses;
- Fortune 500 consultant Dianna Booher for sales and communications courses;
- Xebec for business skills courses in multiple languages including their entire multi-lingual library;
ELI for legal compliance training, civil treatment and human resource management courses; Harvard University's Manage Mentor online multi-lingual resource that covers 28 key business topics.
"These courses were developed by recognized thought leaders in response to real business problems. They help employees acquire new skills and parlay that knowledge into increased sales, improved profitability and better overall business performance," said Brnilovich.
"The need for professional education has never been greater. The increasing skill base of today's workforce, combined with the blending of business disciplines and corporate pressures for financial growth result in a solid and sustained demand for high quality professional development," said Cushing Anderson, senior analyst at IDC. "The stable of subject matter experts from important business areas that contribute to this library combined with the broader assets and global capability Thomson offers, put it in an industry-leading position to capitalize on this continued market growth. Thomson is in a position to provide end-to-end learning solutions and strong branded content to the largest companies in the world."
While, the acquisition will enable Thomson to continue its focus on providing learning solutions that link job performance to business objectives. The courses will be available through Thomson Enterprise Learning businesses, including NETg (http://www.netg.com) and Thomson Enterprise Solutions (http://www.thomsonlearning.com.)
About Thomson
The Thomson Corporation (www.thomson.com), with 2001 revenues of $7.2 billion, is a global leader in providing integrated information solutions to business and professional customers. Thomson provides value-added information, software applications and tools to more than 20 million users in the fields of corporate training, assessment and testing, higher education, reference information, law, tax, accounting, financial services, and scientific research and healthcare. The Corporation's common shares are listed on the New York and Toronto stock exchanges (NYSE, TSX: TOC).