MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
April 9 – April 16, 2009 Edition O’Callaghan Replaces
HMH Chief Tony Lucki

NEW YORK, NY(Authorlink News, April 9, 2009)—Barry O’Callaghan, chairman and the largest shareholder of Education Media & Publishing Group (EMPG), has taken over as CEO of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH), to replace Tony Lucki, who is retiring effective April 15.

EMPG is the parent company for HMH.

In 2006, the 40-something O’Callaghan engineered a $3.4 billion merger between Dublin-based Riverdeep with Houghton Mifflin, then the very next year sealed the $4 billion acquisition of the Harcourt division of Reed Elsevier. The resulting company became Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Tony Lucki became CEO of Houghton Mifflin in 2003 and managed its merger with Harcourt. In an employee memo announcing his retirement, Lucki said the decision to retire was a personal one. He will remain in non-executive roles as chairman of HMH, vice chairman of EMPG and director of EMPGi, the company’s emerging markets vehicle.

“HMH has many exciting opportunities ahead of it. Recent steps we have taken put the Company in an even stronger position to deliver value to our customers and to build on our market leadership. We are on sound operational and financial footing and have great potential to grow our trusted,” Lucki said. He praised O’Callaghan for leading the way “into an even greater future” for HMH. brands and businesses.”

Education Media had been considering selling HMH since early this year. Just last month, O’Callaghan announced that EMPG had taken HMH off the market for sale after failing to get a suitable offer from three potential buyers. “What we concluded was that the offers we’ve received were less than what the business was worth in terms of long-term value and long-term profitability,” Mr. O’Callaghan told the media. He owns more than 40% of closely held Education Media.