Parent of Thomson Learning. Brands, some of them retired, include Brooks/Cole, Course Technology, Duxbury, Harcourt, Heinle, Schimer, South-West, Wadsworth and West.

By John Vivian

A traveling salesman in the Canadian north, Roy Thomson, bought a down-and-out radio station in 1932. Two years later Thomson picked up a floundering newspaper in the same town. Those were the humble roots of Thomson Corporation, which, still family-controlled, is one of the world's most powerful information services companies. Thomson's son Kenneth, who inherited control, continued to build the company's fortunes and his own. In 1998 Forbes magazine estimated Kenneth R. Thomson's worth at $14.4 billion. That made him the world's seventh richest person, said Forbes.

Thomson was a $7.2 billion company by 2002. Its textbook units generated somewhere around $2 billion in revenue in North America, making it the continent's fourth largest educational publisher, after Pearson, McGraw-Hill and Scholastic. Investors liked Thomson for its steady and growing earnings.

The company has shifted from its Canadian heritage and operates mostly in the United States. Its focus is products for the vast information-hungry U.S. financial and legal industries. A major but secondary component is Thomson Learning, whose numerous imprints, some now retired, include Course Technology, South-West, Wadsworth and West.

Thomson Corporation has re-invented itself twice. From its roots in Canadian newspaper ownership in the 1930s, the company moved into newspapers in the United States. Thomson acquired more than 100 U.S. newspapers, mostly small dailies, and eventually owned more newspapers in the United States than any other company. Most of the newspapers were undistinguished, operating on stringent budgets, but Thomson had showcases -- the Toronto Globe & Mail, the London Times and Sunday Times, and the Jerusalem Post.

Other businesses were added over the years. These included textbook publisher Wadsworth.

In the 1990s, Thomson made a strategic decision to re-invent itself as a business-information provider. The signal of the shift was the 1996 acquisition of West Publishing, a Minnesota company that was the leading producer of legal reference materials, including the comprehensive Westlaw online reference site. West also had a textbook list. Thomson began shedding properties that didn't fit its new plan. Thomson Travel, which operated travel agencies and resorts, was sold in 1998. Newspapers were sold in groups. Thomson's largest U.S. unit, Community Newspapers, was sold in 2000.

Meanwhile, several financial data services were purchased, including Primark in 2000. In 2001 Thomson acquired most of Harcourt, a venerable U.S. education publisher. Thomson also bought First Call, an investment forecasting service, in 2001.

In an Americanization move to pursue its focus markets, Thomson transferred its operations headquarters to Stamford, Connecticut, to further its reinvention. The company shifted to U.S. dollars for its financial reports. In 2002 it was ready to move itself from the Toronto Stock Exchange to the New York Stock Exchange. Once listed on the NYSE, Thomson planned to raise significant revenue by selling 7 percent of the company's stock in a public offering. The stock offering would reduce Ken Thomson's stake from 73 percent to a little less than 70 percent. The goal was to raise cash to reduce debt, which was high at $4.4 billion, about 54 percent of shareholder equity. The goal was also to finance further acquisitions to compete against other giants in the information purveyor field -- Reed Elsevier, Reuters, Bloomberg, Pearson and McGraw-Hill.

Updated April 22, 2002

Related article: Roy Thomson: The founder

SA2 bibliography:

William Prochnau. "The State of the American Newspaper: In Lord Thomson's Realm," American Journalism Review (October 1998), Pages 44-61.