Koninklijke Brill NV

M&A Activity • Dec 5, 2016

PRESS RELEASE

Brill announces intent to acquire Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink

Leiden, 5 December 2016

Brill, the international scholarly publisher, announces the intent to acquire the publishing houses Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink, Paderborn (Germany).

Brill and the owners have come to an agreement about the acquisition of Ferdinand Schöningh GmbH & Co. KG and Wilhelm Fink GmbH& Co. Verlags-KG, Paderborn, including the imprint Konstanz University Press.

The transaction includes highly esteemed journals and book series in History, Theology, Literature and Cultural Studies, Media Studies and Philosophy. In total, the publishing list comprises of 5,500 book titles and 7 journals, growing by 330 new titles each year. The annual turnover is more than € 3 million, and the deal is expected to have a positive effect on Brill's earnings per share in 2017.

Brill's CEO Herman Pabbruwe says: "Ferdinand Schöningh and Wilhelm Fink are high-quality academic publishing houses with a long tradition in serving the humanities and social sciences. This acquisition will strengthen Brill's program in several key subject fields. It will also expand our already strong position in Germany, the largest market for academic publications in Europe. We have great respect for the scholarly community and publishing tradition in Germany and will continue and intensify our good relationships with authors, universities, libraries, funders and trade partners in the German speaking countries."

Brill intends to invest in further digitizing the program and establishing a strong international distribution of the list providing authors with global visibility and additional services. Brill has its headquarters in Leiden and will maintain the office location in Paderborn, Germany, in addition to the offices in Boston and Singapore.

The acquisition is planned to take effect as per 1 January 2017. The final agreement is contingent upon a positive outcome of the remaining due diligence procedure.

Herman Pabbruwe, CEO pabbruwe@brill.com, +31620421134

PRESS RELEASE

About Brill

Founded in 1683 in Leiden, the Netherlands, Brill is a leading international academic publisher in 20 main subject areas, including Middle East and Islamic Studies, Asian Studies, Classical Studies, History, Biblical and Religious Studies, Language & Linguistics, Biology, and International Law. With offices in Leiden, Boston and Singapore, Brill today publishes 265 journals and about 900 new books and reference works each year, available in both print and electronic form. Brill also markets a large number of primary source research collections and databases. The company's key customers are academic and research institutions, libraries, and scholars. Brill is a publicly traded company and is listed on Euronext Amsterdam NV. For further information, please visit www.brill.com.

About Ferdinand Schöningh

Founded in 1847 in Paderborn, Ferdinand Schöningh specializes in History, Catholic Theology, Pedagogy, Linguistics and Literary Studies. The program comprises of highly esteemed book series published under the auspices of foundations such as Stiftung Konrad Adenauer Haus, Otto von Bismarck Stiftung and Kommission für Zeitgeschichte. It also includes the Handbook of the History of Religion, Handbook of Pedagogy and monographs on Ancient History, History of Synods, Modern History, National Socialism as well as Violence and Perpetrator History. The family-owned company publishes several journals and around 170 new titles per year. They are a member and shareholder of UTB, a successful German based marketing and sales organization for textbooks and academic literature.

About Wilhelm Fink

In 1962 Wilhelm Fink, previous editor of Deutsche Verlags Anstalt DVA, founded his own publishing company. Starting with a number of philological works the program, which was acquired by Ferdinand Schöningh in 1973, expanded into Philosophy, Art and Cultural Studies. Amongst others the publisher established the field Media Studies in the intellectual debate in Germany and oversaw the editing of important collected works of Johan Huizinga, Susan Taubes and Friedrich Kittler. With the University of Konstanz, Wilhelm Fink established hermeneutics as a theory in modern intellectual history. The cooperation with the university led to the foundation of Konstanz University Press as an imprint of Wilhelm Fink. The company publishes well-known journals and around 160 new titles per year and is also a member and shareholder of UTB.