It’s not what you think, though.
Today, my business unit was acquired by a competitor, ProQuest. Interestingly enough, ProQuest is also located in Betheda, MD.
If you want all the public details, you can check out the press release from ProQuest.
The summary is this: ProQuest will acquire most of the products based in Bethesda, including, LN Congressional, LN Stat, GPI, and a few others. Add to that Environment Abstracts, the product I managed during our divestment last year.
Overall, this seems to be a good move and, though I’m still cautious. The story is that ProQuest was excellent to work with during the acquisition negotiations. ProQuest seems to be more aligned with our specific business. With LN, we were the odd man out, the stepkids, so to speak. We really didn’t fit into the overarching business model and that meant it was hard for us to obtain funding and resources for our projects. ProQuest has a large microfilm/fiche operation and they have a nice international business.
The best news is that every employee of the acquired products are moving to ProQuest. The only exception is our VP, who is one of the most capable individuals I’ve ever met. That’s a real loss, but understandable.
31 December will be our last day with LN. On 1 January, we will all become ProQuest employees. Going to be interesting…
