Publishing Merger

On 26 July 2007 the Shuttleworth Foundation made a submission to the South African Competition Commission opposing the merger application of international publishing companies Pearson PLC and Harcourt Education International. The proposed merger of these enterprises would result in the integration of local subsidiaries Maskew Miller Longman and Heinemann Publishing in South Africa.

A successful international and subsequent local integration would have a negative impact on local education by driving greater concentration of an already over-concentrated publishing industry for educational materials. In particular, the local textbook market would be impacted upon in terms of pricing, diversity, relevance, local content and local language availability.

On 14 August 2007 the Commission decided to conditionally approve the merger between Pearson PLC and Harcourt International on condition that the parties may not integrate their South African businesses. If they ever intend to do so in the future, they have to notify the Competition Commission which will trigger a similar investigation.

This is a very positive result given that the Commission made specific mention of the public interest concerns in its decision. In addition to preventing the potential merger of Maskew Miller Longman and Heineman it is the hope of the Shuttleworth Foundation that the intervention will prompt the authority to further investigate the school textbook market that suffers from unnecessary complexity and creates barriers to education in its current form. We continue to monitor this issue.