Sales 2023: €5.584 billion

Overview

From four Dutch publishing houses dating back to the 19th century, Wolters Kluwer has evolved into one of the world's largest knowledge and information service providers. Today, Wolters Kluwer's product range includes information and services in the areas of medicine/health, tax/finance, governance, and law. The company operates in over 180 countries worldwide.

General Information

Headquarters 
Zuidpoolsingel 2
Alphen aan den Rijn
Netherlands
Telephone 0031 172 641400
Website: wolterskluwer.com/investors

Branches of trade: Technical information, software development
Legal form: Stock Company
Financial year: 01.01. – 31.12.
Founding year: 1836 (Wolters Schoolbook Publishing), 1858 (Noordhoff Publishing), 1968 (Schoolbook and Noordhoff merge), 1972 (Wolters-Noordhoff merges with the Information and Communications Union of the Samson family), 1987 (Kluwer and Wolters-Samson merge to form Wolters Kluwer NV)

Economic basic data (in million €)

	2024	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018
Revenue		5.584	5.453	4.771	4.603	4.612	4.259
Profit		1.007	1.027	728	721	669	656
Share price (in €, year-end)		127,90	97,76	103,60	69,06	65,40	51,20
Employees		21.438	20.500	19.800	19.170	18.361	18.600

Sales by business segment (in million €)

	2023	2022	2021	2020	2019	2018
Health	1.508	1.448	1.234	1.193	1.186	1.109
Tax & Accounting	1.466	1.394	1.510	1.431	1.413	1.295
Financial & Corporate Compliance	1.052	1.056
Legal & Regulatory	875	916	888	905	945	880
Corporate Performance & ESG	683	639

Executives and Directors

Management:

• Nancy McKinstry, CEO
• Kevin Entricken, CFO
• Stacey Caywood, CEO Wolters Kluwer Health
• Karen Abramson, CEO Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting
• Richard Flynn, CEO Wolters Kluwer Governance, Risk & Compliance
• Martin O'Malley, EVP Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory
• Cathy Wolfe, EVP & President Global Growth Markets
• Andres Sadler, CEO Global Business Services
• Dennis Cahill, Chief Technology Officer, Digital eXperience Group

Supervisory Board:

• Ann Ziegler, Chair
• Jack de Kreji
• Bertrand Bodson, Keywords Studios plc
• Jeanette Horan
• Heleen Kersten, Stibbe NV
• Sophie Vandebroek
• Chris Vogelzang

History

In 1836, Jan Berend Wolters founded the Schoolbook Publishing Company in Groningen, which he later renamed JB Wolters Publishing Company. Since Wolters was childless, his brother-in-law, Eduard Benjamin ter Horst, took over the management of the company after his death. A period of expansion followed, with ter Horst adding a printing and bookbinding business. In 1885, he made his son his business partner. After the death of Benjamin ter Horst, Jr., the publishing house declined, so much so that his half-brothers, Felix Robert and Adolf ter Horst, even considered closing the company. However, they transformed the company into a corporation and appointed managing directors for the first time. Dr. Anthony M.H. Schepman, an employee of the JB Wolters Company and distant relative, was appointed managing director in 1917 and held this position for over 40 years. 

Under Schepman, the publishing house continued to expand. In 1920, a branch office was opened in Jakarta, Indonesia (colony of the Dutch East Indies), to supply literature to the Dutch-speaking population there. These expansion plans came to an abrupt end in 1959, when Indonesia nationalized all foreign-owned companies. However, by 1949, JB Wolters Jakarta had already established a stable position in the Flemish book market. 

The era of family publishing was drawing to a close, and a wave of mergers did not spare Wolters either. In 1968, the JB Wolters Company merged with the family publishing house of the same name, founded by Popko Noordhoff in 1858, whose headquarters were located in the immediate vicinity of Wolters. In 1972, the newly founded group merged with the Information and Communication Union (ICU), a company that had been formed two years earlier from the merger of the publishers Samson and AW Sijthoff. In 1983, the entire group's name was changed to Wolters-Samson. 

The first publication, Ebele E. Kluwer, appeared in 1891 in Deventer in the eastern Netherlands. For a long time, Kluwer focused its publishing activities primarily on the education and higher education sectors, as well as on children's books. Kluwer always remained a family business and developed into the third-largest publishing group in the Netherlands. In 1987, the country's largest publisher, Reed Elsevier, made the first of two takeover attempts through massive share purchases. A year earlier, Elsevier had begun merger talks with the publisher, but Kluwer's management rejected the plan, citing differences in business philosophy. Instead, they responded to Elsevier's share purchases by holding talks about a friendly takeover with Wolters-Samson. On August 14, 1987, Wolters-Samson announced that it owned 50.9 percent of Kluwer's share capital. The new company changed its name to Wolters Kluwer NV and moved into new headquarters in Amsterdam. 

This merger made Wolters Kluwer NV the second-largest publisher in the Netherlands. Through share purchases of various foreign companies, such as the US subsidiary Kluwer Law Book Publishing Company and independent companies such as Raven Press, Aspen System, and others, the publisher began a period of international expansion. In the following years, the company expanded its operations to France, West Germany, and Spain. By 1989, Wolters Kluwer NV was already generating 44 percent of its revenue in foreign markets. 

The opening of European borders increased the demand for specialist books and translations on European law. Wolters Kluwer entered this sector and began expanding into Eastern Europe. In 1995, the group further expanded its sphere of influence in other European countries by acquiring various publishing houses in Sweden, Austria, France, Spain, and Germany, so that at that time the company had offices in 16 countries with approximately 8,000 employees. In 1996, Wolters Kluwer acquired the well-known US tax and economics publisher CCH for almost two billion dollars. The group thus strengthened its position in the American and Asian markets. 

In spring 2014, Wolters Kluwer acquired the legal management software and service provider Datacert and released the medical decision-making system "UpToDate" in the UK and Western Europe. In 2016, Wolters Kluwer acquired the global provider of various software and Cloud Computing-Offers Enablon. One year later, the Wolters Kluwer Education division was sold to Bridgepoint Capital.

Today, Wolters Kluwer has largely completed its digital transformation. In 2015, 83 percent of total revenue was generated with products from its software or online divisions. The company still employs numerous specialists who research and evaluate specialist information, but this no longer requires laborious printing and distribution, at least in Europe and the USA. In the Chinese and Indian markets, where Wolters Kluwer has expanded in recent years, there is still a demand for printed information. Healthcare reforms in China and the USA, for example, have opened up new areas of activity and sales opportunities for the company, particularly in the area of clinical software to support treatment decisions. 

management

American Nancy McKinstry took over the role of Chief Executive Officer in 2003, becoming the only female CEO in the Dutch publishing industry and now the longest-serving female CEO in the entire Dutch industry. She initiated a radical restructuring of the then-ailing information group, focusing on consolidation, cost savings, and better integration of the large publishing network, even resorting to mass layoffs.

A second project for McKinstry was to catch up with industry competitors such as Reed Elsevier in the areas of electronic publishing and the Internet and to expand its publishing activities in these areas. Since then, the number of publications on electronic media and software development programs has been consistently expanded. 

In 2007, the company divested its education division because it was unable to meet the executive board's high return targets. This sale marked the end of McKinstry's restructuring program, which brought the information company back into the black. In 2013, McKinstry was ranked 15th among Fortune magazine's 50 Most Important Women in International Business.

Business segments

Since 2010, the group has been focused on four internationally operating business units, each focused on its own customer base: "Health," "Governance, Risk & Compliance," "Tax & Accounting," and "Legal & Regulatory." Each of the four divisions has its own independent management team.

Wolters Kluwer Health is a global information service provider for professionals and students in healthcare, medicine, and pharmacy. The Medical Research division's products include Ovid Technologies, a world-leading host of bibliographic and full-text databases for medical and academic research. A total of one million people from 180 countries use Wolters Kluwer's 14 different health information services.

Wolters Kluwer Governance, Risk & Compliance Services Wolters Kluwer is a US-based provider of legal, banking, securities, and insurance services. The division is divided into five client-focused divisions: Wolters Kluwer Financial Services, ARC Logics, and Wolters Kluwer Transport Services. The division's products and services include comprehensive operational, credit, and risk management solutions. Capital changes and corporate actions are also designed to help companies facilitate financial risk management, thereby increasing efficiency and productivity across all business areas. 

Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting is the world's largest provider of software and online services in the areas of tax and accounting. The division's main markets range from North America to Europe and Asia. Online products and services are the division's fastest-growing product segment, and the American company CCH (Commerce Clearing House, acquired by Wolters Kluwer in 1995) forms its most important pillar. CCH produces more than 700 different print and online products on tax and business law.

Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory is a provider of legal literature and software for law and consulting firms, legal departments, universities, libraries, and governments. The division's business includes customized information and services, software development, various online portals, and a wide variety of publications. A total of 210,000 tax offices, 85 percent of all US insurance companies, and 600,000 legal professionals are Wolters Kluwer customers.

Current developments

China and India remain the company's most important growth markets. Since December 2010, the group's legal textbooks have been translated in China by the specialist publisher Commercial Press. The medical search platform Ovid had previously published a Chinese-language version. Since 2011, Wolters Kluwer has been developing an electronic information system for Chinese hospitals together with the Chinese information service provider Medicom. Since 2012, as part of a strategic alliance with the China Publishing Group Corporation (CPGC), Wolters Kluwer's products have been distributed worldwide by Wolters Kluwer, and Wolters Kluwer's products in China have been distributed by CPGC.

In October 2019, the Cologne Regional Court ruled that Wolters Kluwer was no longer permitted to operate and promote the legal tech contract generator "Smartlaw" in Germany. The reason given was that the digital legal document generator's services may only be provided by lawyers. Wolters Kluwer intends to take legal action against this decision, as the company argues that it was not a legal service.