Holtzbrinck group: landmarks

Landmarks

This chronology is indicative only. Context is provided by the broader communications and media timeline.

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Precursors

1624 Hermann Böhlaus founded in Weimar

1682 J B Metzler founded in Stuttgart

1843 Macmillan founded

1845 Scientific American established

1873 Henry Holt & Co established

1896 corporate reorganisation results in establishment of Macmillan & Co Ltd in UK and Macmillan Co in US, with Macmillan family holding most equity

1904 Macmillan opens Australian office in Melbourne

1906 Macmillan of Canada established

1908 Sidgwick & Jackson founded

1912 Macmillan buys Morang Educational Co in Canada

1944 Pan Books founded by Alan Bott

1946 Der Pattlach Verlag

1946 W H Freeman founded

1947 Pan starts publishing mass-market paperbacks

Foundation

1948 Georg von Holtzbrinck founds Holtzbrinck publishing group

1949 Schneekluth Verlag founded

1952 St Martins Press founded

1966 Worth publishers founded by Robert Worth, Walter Meagher & Neil Patterson

1972 Picador imprint launched

1973 Holtzbrinck buys O.W. Barth

1983 Forte sells Sidgwick & Jackson to Macmillan

1987 Collins and Heinemann sell stake in Pan to Macmillan

1989 Holtzbrinck sells Deutscher Bücherbund, the dominant German book club

Overseas expansion

1994 Holtzbrinck buys Farrar Strauss Giroux

1995 Holtzbrinckbuys 71% of Macmillan for £249m

1995 buys Verlag Moritz Diesterweg

1996 Holtzbrinck buys Boxtree books

1998 buys Verlag Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger Weimar

1999 buys remaining 29% of Macmillan

1999 Holtzbrinck takes 49% stake in the European Wall Street Journal, with Dow Jones taking 22% stake in Holtzbrinck's Handelsblatt

2002 sells radio and television interests to RTL

2003 federal government forbids acquisition of Berliner Zeitung, Berliner Kurier and Sächsische Zeitung from Bertelsmann-controlled Gruner + Jahr

2004 Holtzbrinck launches News in Frankfurt

2004 buys educational publishing list of Mexican textbook publisher Ediciones Castillo

2004 buys Roaring Brook Press (founded 2001)

2005 sells Berliner Verlag (Berliner Zeitung and Berliner Kurier) to Mecom (David Montgomery and Veronis Suhler Stevenson) for £53m

2006 launches free daily Business News in Frankfurt AM