Chapter 4: Present Ownership

The Macmillan group is owned by Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH, a large media group created in 1971. Holtzbrinck owns around 40 companies apart from Macmillan and is headquartered in Stuttgart.

Its interests include book, magazine and newspaper publishers and new media firms.
The group’s portfolio is built upon five key areas:

• fiction and non-fiction book publishing
• education and science publishing
• business and finance / national newspapers
• regional newspapers and printing
• electronic media

The origins of the company lie in the Stuttgarter Hausbucherei, a library founded by Georg von Holtzbrinck in 1948. The Hausbucherei gradually evolved into the Deutsche Bucherbund book club, which until the mid-1980s was the biggest company within the group.

The 1980s saw expansion into English-language areas and the disposal of the book club. The company’s acquisition of a 70.81% stake in Macmillan in April 1995 assured its penetration into the English-language markets of the world and territories, such as Latin America and Japan, where English is in high demand. Holtzbrinck purchased the remaining shares in October 1999. This was the stage at which the Macmillan family formally ended its 156-year ownership of the eponymous publishing house.