Cengage and McGraw-Hill Education have terminated their merger efforts, marking the end of a contested and protracted plan first announced a year ago.
The decision, announced this morning, was “unanimously approved” by the boards of directors of both companies. Neither party expects to owe any deal termination fees to each other.
On a conference call, Cengage CEO Michael Hansen attributed the cancellation to a lengthy regulatory review process with the U.S. Department of Justice and terms that would have forced the company to sell off some of its course assets, effectively rendering the transaction “not sensible.”
Had the merger gone through, it would have created the second largest U.S. textbook publisher, worth about $3 billion. The two companies together offer about 44,000 textbook titles, and would operate under one brand, McGraw Hill, with Hansen at the helm as CEO.