Civil engineering businesses 1844–1925 In 1844
Samuel Pearson became an associate partner in a small brickmaking and contracting
civil engineering company in
Huddersfield,
West Yorkshire. In 1856 Pearson's eldest son George entered the business, which became known as
S. Pearson & Son, described as "sanitary tube and brickmakers and contractors for local
public works in and around
Bradford". In November 1915, during the First World War, the firm began construction of
HM Factory, Gretna, the largest
cordite factory in the United Kingdom. The construction business was wound down during the 1920s. and completion of the
Sennar Dam in Sudan in 1925.
Manufacturing businesses 1856–1993 In 1856, S. Pearson & Son advertised itself as manufacturing sanitary tubes and bricks in Yorkshire. Pearson acquired Allied English Potteries, including
Royal Crown Derby, in 1964, and bought
Doulton & Co. in November 1971, merging the ceramics interests. Pearson purchased the
Fairey Group in 1980, and its engineering operations were merged with Doulton's industrial ceramics engineering. Pearson sold Doulton Glass Industries Ltd in 1982. The group later repeated this model in Chile. Pearson founded the
Mexican Eagle Petroleum Company in 1909 to hold the group's Mexican oil interests. In 1919 the
Royal Dutch Shell Group acquired a large share of, and managerial control over, Mexican Eagle. Pearson then formed Whitehall Petroleum Corporation Ltd to take over residual Pearson oil interests and prospect globally for oil. Amerada was compulsorily acquired by the British government in 1941 during the Second World War; Pearson reacquired a small interest in 1945. In 1919 Pearson also acquired a 45% stake in the London branch of merchant bankers
Lazard Brothers. During the depression years Pearson's holding increased to about 80% after the 1931 rescue of Lazard Brothers, whose London house had been weakened by large concealed foreign-exchange losses at its Brussels office. In 1976 Pearson acquired a stake in Embankment Trust Ltd. The company developed and operated collieries, including in the Kent coalfield, and was affected by the post-war nationalisation of the coal industry. Under the 3rd Viscount Cowdray, who chaired the company from 1954 to 1977, Pearson shifted further towards publishing and media. The group bought the
Financial Times and acquired a 50% stake in
The Economist in 1957, purchased
Longman in 1968, became a public company in 1969, and acquired
Penguin Books in 1970 and
Ladybird Books in 1972. In 1984 the company changed its name from S. Pearson & Son plc to
Pearson plc. It bought the educational publisher
Pitman Ltd in 1985.
Lord Blakenham, a grandson of the 2nd Viscount Cowdray, became chairman in 1983. Contemporary reporting described Pearson under Blakenham as narrowing a formerly sprawling conglomerate towards chosen core areas, with disposals including Château Latour, building products, sanitary ware, film production, glass and engineering. In 1996 Pearson sold Westminster Press to
Newsquest, and acquired the education division of
HarperCollins from
News Corporation.
Aviation businesses 1929–1959 In 1929, Pearson's Whitehall Securities entered aviation by purchasing an interest in
Airwork Services. By 1935 Whitehall Securities had major interests in British airlines and aviation companies, including
Spartan Air Lines,
Saunders-Roe,
United Airways Limited and
Hillman's Airways. Under
Bernard Clive Pearson, Whitehall Securities helped consolidate Britain's private airline sector. In September 1935, Hillman's Airways, Spartan Air Lines and United Airways merged to form
British Airways Ltd. Scottish Airways was nationalised by the British government in 1947 and merged into
British European Airways. Pearson's newly formed subsidiary
The Tussauds Group redeveloped Chessington Zoo into Chessington World of Adventures, opened in 1987, and purchased
Alton Towers in 1990. The diversification was supported by Pearson chairman
Patrick Gibson, Baron Gibson, who had backed the Madame Tussauds acquisition before becoming group chairman. In 1998 Pearson sold the Tussauds Group to venture capital firm Charterhouse Development Capital for £352 million, ending its involvement in visitor attractions. In 1981 Pearson's publishing subsidiary
Pearson Longman established Goldcrest Films and Television with
Goldcrest Films founder Jake Eberts; James Lee, chief executive of Pearson Longman, chaired the new concern. At inception, the new concern owned 40% of Goldcrest Films. During the 1990s Pearson acquired television and production assets including former
ITV franchisee
Thames Television, Australian production company
Grundy Television, U.S. television company All American Communications, Italian drama production company Mastrofilm, European animation financer and distributor EVA Entertainment, and UK production company
Talkback Productions. In 1994 Pearson acquired software publisher
The Software Toolworks for US$462 million and rebranded it
Mindscape. In 1998 Pearson sold Mindscape to
The Learning Company for US$150 million, taking a $346 million loss on the sale. In 2000 Pearson merged its television holdings with
CLT-UFA to form the
RTL Group. In 2002 it exited the industry by selling its 22% stake in RTL to
Bertelsmann.
Pearson Education and corporate refocus 1998–2016 Scardino and new focus on education Marjorie Scardino, chief executive of Pearson from 1997 to 2013 and the first woman to lead a
FTSE 100 company, increasingly focused the conglomerate on education and education-related acquisitions. In 1998 Pearson purchased the education division of
Simon & Schuster, which included
Prentice Hall,
Allyn & Bacon, and parts of
Macmillan Inc. including the Macmillan name. Later in 1998 it merged Simon & Schuster's educational business with Addison Wesley Longman to form
Pearson Education. Pearson sold or divested most of the non-education Simon & Schuster divisions in 1999. In March 2000 Pearson acquired illustrated reference publisher
Dorling Kindersley and integrated it within Penguin. It acquired National Computer Systems (NCS) in September 2000, entering the educational assessment and school management systems market in the United States. In 2002 Pearson purchased
Rough Guides, the travel publisher, and brought it under Penguin. In 2003 it acquired
Edexcel, a provider of qualifications in the United Kingdom, and in 2004 acquired about an 80% stake in Meximerica Media Inc for the U.S. Hispanic market. Pearson purchased a series of testing and assessment businesses, including Knowledge Technologies in 2004, AGS in 2005, Promissor in 2006, and National Evaluation Systems, a provider of customised state assessments for teacher certification in the United States, in 2006. It acquired eCollege, a digital learning technology group, in 2007. In 2007 Pearson Education sold the Macmillan name to
Holtzbrinck Publishing Group. In February 2008 Pearson announced the sale of its Pearson Data Management Division, formerly the scanner manufacturing and servicing division of NCS Inc., to
Scantron Corporation. In 2010 Pearson acquired the adult English training service Wall Street Institute and the school learning systems division of Sistema Educacional Brasileiro. Also in 2010, the company sold its 61% stake in Interactive Data to investment funds managed by
Silver Lake Partners and
Warburg Pincus.
Pearson Education rebrands as Pearson and Pearson plc becomes education-focused Pearson Education was rebranded as simply Pearson in 2011. In July 2011 Pearson announced the creation of
Pearson College, a British degree provider based in London. Also in 2011, Pearson acquired
Connections Education, agreed to sell its 50% stake in FTSE International Limited to the London Stock Exchange for £450 million, and increased its stake in TutorVista to 76%. In May 2012 Pearson announced its acquisition of GlobalEnglish Corporation, an American
Business English software and solutions company. In October 2012 Pearson entered into talks with
Bertelsmann over the possible combination of
Penguin Group and
Random House, and later said it would merge Penguin Books with Bertelsmann's Random House to create the world's largest consumer book publisher. In February 2013 Pearson sold Pearson in Practice, a UK vocational training business, to
West Nottinghamshire College, which renamed it Vision Workforce Skills. In May 2013 Pearson announced a restructuring plan to invest in digital learning and emerging markets after predicting weaker earnings. The restructuring combined Pearson International and Pearson North America under one Pearson company, reorganised around School, Higher Education and Professional, while the Financial Times Group and Pearson English formed part of Pearson Professional. In July 2014 the company announced that it had cut 4,000 jobs, representing about 10% of its workforce. In July 2015 Pearson agreed to sell the FT Group, including the
Financial Times, to Japanese media group
Nikkei for £844 million. Pearson retained the publishing rights to FT Press and licensed the trademark from Nikkei. In August 2015 Pearson sold its 50% stake in
The Economist Group to the
Agnelli family and other existing shareholders. Following the sale of its financial news publications
Financial Times and
The Economist in 2015, Pearson rebranded in January 2016 to focus solely on education, adopting a new logo based on the
interrobang (‽), a combination of a question mark and an exclamation mark.
Education-only period and recent developments 2017–present In July 2017 Pearson sold its TutorVista and Edurite businesses to India-based education technology company
Byju's. It also agreed to reduce its holding in
Penguin Random House to 25% by selling a 22% stake to Bertelsmann. In August 2017 Pearson announced that it would cut 3,000 jobs in an effort to save £300 million annually. It also sold its Global Education language-training subsidiary to Chinese company Pu-Xin Education. In 2019 Pearson sold its US K-12 courseware business to private equity firm Nexus Capital Management, which rebranded it as
Savvas Learning Company. In December 2019 Pearson announced that it would sell its remaining 25% stake in Penguin Random House to Bertelsmann; the sale completed in 2020.
John Fallon retired as chief executive in 2020 and was succeeded by
Andy Bird on 19 October 2020. In September 2023 Pearson announced that Bird would retire and that Omar Abbosh, previously president of Microsoft Industry Solutions, would become chief executive. Abbosh took over on 8 January 2024, with Bird remaining until 31 March 2024 to support the transition. In April 2022 Pearson acquired the online language-learning platform
Mondly. In April 2022 it also acquired ClutchPrep, which was renamed Channels and added to the Pearson website. == Organisational structure ==