Thomson Group: Landmarks
Landmarks
This chronology is indicative only. It covers -
- Beginnings
- Expansion into UK (1952)
- Hits black gold (1972)
- Moves out of UK (1981)
- And out of newspapers (2000)
Context is provided by the broader communications and media timeline on this site.
Beginnings
1931 Roy Thomson founds first radio station at North Bay in Canada
1934 buys first Canadian newspaper - the Timmins Weekly Press
1937 forms partnership with Jack Kent Cooke
1946 buys 50% of Canadian Liberty magazine
1947 buys Guelp Mercury and Chatham Daily News
1949 sells Canadian Liberty to Cooke
1951 buys Aberdeen Journals Ltd (inc The Aberdeen Press & Journal) in UK
1952 founds Canadian Weekly Review
Expansion into UK
1952 buys The Scotsman newspaper in UK for £750,000
1953 fails in bid for election to Canadian Parliament
1954 moves to Scotland
1954 owns largest number of newspapers in Canada
1955 buys Sudbury Star, fails to buy Globe & Mail
1957 gains Scottish Television franchise ("license to print money") for £400,000
1957 buys Highland News Group in UK
1958 buys Inverness Northern Chronicle (founded 1881) in UK
1959 buys Kemsley newspapers (including Sunday Times and regional newspaper operations in Aberdeen, Middlesborough, Blackburn, Sheffield, Manchester, Cardiff and Newcastle)
1961 forms Thomson Publications as a vehicle for UK book and magazine publishing interests
1961 buys The Illustrated London News magazines and Michael Joseph book publishing house
1961 buys Belfast Telegraph
1962 buys Thomas Nelson
1963 Hamish Hamilton, George Rainbird and Derwent Publications
1964 Roy Thomson becomes a peer
1965 buys Chester Chronicle & Associated Newspapers group in UK
1965 launches Reading Evening Post
1965 Thomson Newspapers in Canada goes public
1965 founds Thomson Travel by buying package tour companies and Britannia Airways
1966 buys The Times
1966 forms Thomson Yellow Pages
1966 Thomson founds Sphere paperback imprint
1967 launches Watford Echo, Slough Evening Mail and Luton Post
1967 Thomson Newspapers buys Brush-Moore Newspapers (12 dailies and 2 weeklies) in US for US$72m
1969 sells US Thomas Nelson
Hits black gold
1971 joins North Sea oil and gas exploration consortium
1973 Piper (North Sea) oil field discovery
1974 Claymore (North Sea) oil field discovery
1976 death of Roy Thomson
1977 sells Scottish Television, basis of SMG
1978 buys Wadsworth college textbook and professional book publisher
1978 International Thomson Organisation founded
1978 publication of the Times and Sunday Times suspended for eleven months
1980 buys Warren, Gorham & Lamont, information source for finance professionals
1980 buys FP Publications, inc Toronto Globe & Mail, Winnipeg Free Press, Victoria Times-Colonist, Ottawa Journal and Lethridge Herald
1980 sells Thomson Yellow Pages, forms Thomson Directories as joint venture with Dun & Bradstreet's RH Donnelley
1981 buys Litton (renamed Medical Economics) and Delmar textbook publishing group
Moves out of UK
1981 sells UK Times, Sunday Times and various Times supplements to Rupert Murdoch for £12m
1981 takes 50% interest in 50% interest in Augusta Newsprint
1983 sells Highland Printers in UK
1983 closes Watford Echo and Luton Post
1984 buys the St George Spectrum (Utah)
1985 buys Gale and AutEx
1985 Thomson Books sells Hamish Hamilton, Michael Joseph, Sphere Books, Rainbird Publishing Group and TBD Book Service to Pearson-controlled Penguin
1985 sells Illustrated London News, Family Circle, Living, Drapers Record, Construction News
1986 unloads Burlington Magazine
1987 Thomson buys 37% stake in Associated Book Publishers (Routledge, Chapman & Hall and Sweet & Maxwell) for £77m
1986 buys South-Western Publishing
1987 buys Sweet & Maxwell in the UK
1987 buys Carswell of Canada
1987 buys Monroe Enquirer Journal, Shelby Daily Star and other papers from Clay Communications for US$135m
1987 buys Law Book Company of Australasia
1988 buys Horizon Travel Group
1988 forms Thomson Free Newspapers (TFN) in UK, launches Scotland on Sunday, Wales on Sunday and Belfast Sunday Life
1989 buys Lawyer's Co-operative Publishing in US for US$810m
1989 Thomson Corporation formed through merger of Thomson Newspapers with International Thomson
1989 buys BankWatch from Keefe Bruyette & Woods
1989 sells North Sea oil interests for £358m
1991 buys Maxwell Macmillan Professional & Business Reference Publishing Division from Maxwell for £33m
1992 buys Micromedex and Institute for Scientific Information
1993 buys Online Journal of Current Clinical Trials from American Association for the Advancement of Science
1993 sells most of TFN chain
1994 buys Information Access Company and Medstat Group
1994 sells Reading Evening Post
1994 sells Thames Valley Newspapers to GMG
1995 sells UK newspapers to Trinity and EMAP, buys Peterson's
1995 buys Current Science journals
1995 buys Bucyrus Telegraph-Forum from Freedom
1995 buys Boyd & Fraser publishing
1995 sells The Scotsman and associated papers to Barclay brothers
1996 sells Routledge for £28m, buys Paraninfo in Spain
1996 sells Thomson L.A. News Group to MediaNews
1996 buys West Publishing of America for US$3.4bn
1996 buys Legal Information Resources
1996 sells Aberdeen journals to DMGT's Northcliffe
1997 sells Chapman & Hall to Wolters Kluwer, sells EF Spon
1997 sells Van Nostrand Reinhold to Wiley for US$28m
1998 sells Thomson Travel for US$2bn
1998 buys FT Law & Tax from Pearson for £70m
1999 buys Editorial Aranzadi S.A., Spain's premier legal publisher
1999 sells Corporate University Review
Moves out of newspapers
2000 sells community newspapers in North America for US$2.5bn (inc 17 dailies in Indiana, South Georgia, West Virginia and Maryland to CNHI for US$455m and 21 dailies in Louisiana, Maryland, Ohio, Wisconsin and Utah to Gannett for US$1.12bn)
2000 buys Greenhaven Press and Lucent Books
2000 sells BankWatch to Fitch IBCA
2000 buys La Ley, Argentine legal publisher
2000 buys Primark economic information products group
2000 buys Carson Group, financial information services firm
2000 buys IOB, Brazilian regulatory publishers
2000 buys online business of Dialog
2000 sells Mitchell International automotive info business
2000 sells five Alabama and South Carolina newspapers to Media General for US$237m
2000 sells other North American community newspapers to Gannett, Copley and other groups for US$1.58bn
2000 forms Bell Globemedia with telco Bell Canada Enterprises (BCE), with new company taking Globe & Mail
2000 sells Lethbridge Herald, the Medicine Hat News and six weeklies
2000 buys Editora Pioneira in Brazil and ECAFSA in Mexico
2000 buys Schirmer, Singular, OnWord, Dame, ARCO
2000 sells Thomson BankWatch to Fitch
2001 buys Harcourt's higher education and some corporate/professional publishing units from Elsevier for US$2.06bn
2001 sells Jane's Information Group to Thomson family's Woodbridge for US$110 million
2001 sells daily Chronicle-Journal in Thunder Bay
2001 buys NewsEdge
2001 sells its 50% interest in Augusta Newsprint to Woodbridge for US$190m
2002 buys Gardiner-Caldwell
2002 listed on New York Stock Exchange
2002 buys Current Drugs
2003 buys Delphion Research patent service for US$22m
2003 sells its 20% stake in Bell Globemedia to Woodbridge for US$279m
2005 BCE sells 48.5% of Bell Globemedia for C$1.3 billion to Torstar (20%), Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan (20%) and Thomson family's Woodbridge (8.5%)
2006 Thomson Financial buys AFX business news service from Paris-based news agency Agence France-Presse