Clarivate Acquiring ProQuest for $5.3B

Research information company Clarivate yesterday announced plans to acquire information content and technology company ProQuest for $5.3 billion. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter of this year.

Leaders at the two companies described their businesses as highly complementary during a call for investors. They said the acquisition will enable the organization to serve students, faculty members and staff members with data, resources and software at every stage of the academic research process.

Clarivate was formerly the intellectual property and science division of Thomson Reuters but was spun off into an independent company in 2016. The company is well-known for its annual Journal Citation Reports, as well as research discovery and workflow management tools such as Web of Science, EndNote and ScholarOne.

ProQuest is best known for its content databases and library services. It has 2,700 employees globally. ProQuest staff members will become employees of Clarivate when the deal closes.

"Clarivate and ProQuest are highly complementary businesses, each with a rich and storied heritage," Jerre Stead, executive chairman and CEO of Clarivate, said in a statement. "We share the goal to accelerate innovation through research and knowledge sharing and together we will enable our customers to solve the world's most complex challenges with content dating back centuries, and technologies that address the needs of 21st century customers."