Acquisition

RNS Number : 4100M

Quarto Group Inc

16 August 2011

 



For Immediate Release                                                                                                                                             16 August 2011

The Quarto Group, Inc.

("Quarto" or the "Company")

Quarto Acquires Award-Winning British Book Publisher

Quarto (Full List: QRT.L), one of the largest international co-edition book publishers, has acquired British book publisher Frances Lincoln Limited ("FLL") for £4.5 million in cash.

FLL is well known for its award-winning children's list and its authoritative horticultural titles.  FLL has a backlist of over 1500 titles and published 150 books last year. 

This acquisition more than doubles the size of Quarto's UK-based book publishing revenues.  FLL reported audited profit before tax of £619,000, net assets of £3.8 million and gross assets of £5.9 million for the year ended 31 March 2011.

FLL has a distribution business handling sales and fulfilment for a number of third party publishers and management anticipate merging this with Quarto's existing sales and distribution activities handling titles from US imprints in the UK and continental Europe.

Commenting on the acquisition, Chairman and CEO, Laurence Orbach, said:

"We are delighted to announce the acquisition of Frances Lincoln Limited. FLL is a highly respected publishing business particularly well known as the publisher of Alfred Wainwright, Julia Bradbury, Christopher Lloyd and many other well regarded authors. It complements Quarto's existing UK publishing business, several imprints trading under the Aurum name, and more than doubles the scale of our presence in the UK. The acquisition is in keeping with our strategy to further expand our already broad offering of niche content."  

For further information please contact:

The Quarto Group, Inc.
Laurence Orbach (Chairman and CEO) Mick Mousley (CFO)	020 7700 9004
Buchanan Communications
Mark Edwards Suzanne Brocks Christian Goodbody	020 7466 5000

About Quarto:

Quarto is an international co-edition book publisher with two principal strands of activity: the Publishing segment publishes books, in the US and the UK, under imprints owned by the Group; the Co-Edition Publishing segment creates titles that are licensed to third party publishers around the world for publication under their own imprints in many languages and many geographies. 

 

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