Wolters Kluwer

History

Early history

Jan-Berend Wolters founded the Schoolbook publishing house in Groningen, Netherlands, in 1836. In 1858, the Noordhoff publishing house was founded alongside the Schoolbook publishing house. In 1987, Elsevier, the largest publishing house in the Netherlands, announced its intentions to buy up Kluwer's stock. The merger made Wolters Kluwer the second-largest publishing house in the Netherlands.

After the merger, Wolters Kluwer began expanding internationally with the purchase of IPSOA Editore, Kieser Verlag, Technipublicaciones, and Tele Consulte in 1989. By the end of the year, Wolters Kluwer expanded its presence to Spain, West Germany and France. In 1989, 44% of the company's revenue was earned in foreign markets.

1990s

The following year, Wolters Kluwer purchased J. B. Lippincott & Co. from HarperCollins. The following year, it established its first Eastern European subsidiary, IURA Edition, in Bratislava, Slovakia. The company acquired Jugend & Volk, Dalian, Fateco Fîrlag and Juristfîrlaget, Deutscher Kommunal-Verlag Dr. Naujoks & Behrendt, and Colex Data in 1995. Wolters Kluwer was operating in 16 countries and had approximately 8000 employees by the end of that year.

In 1994, Wolters Kluwer expanded its US legal business by acquiring Prentice Hall Law & Business from Simon & Schuster. In 1995, Wolters Kluwer acquired CT Corporation. The following year, it purchased CCH Inc., a tax and business materials publisher, for $1.9 billion. The purchase assisted in expanding the company's business in Asia because of CCH Inc.'s involvement in Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, and Hong Kong. Waverly, Inc., Ovid Technologies, Inc. and Plenum Publishing Corporation were acquired in 1998 to develop Wolters Kluwer's medical and scientific publishing industry.

2000s

In 2002, Wolters Kluwer sold Kluwer Academic Publishers to the private equity firms Cinven and Candover Investments. (It is now part of Springer). The company established its first three-year strategy to deliver sustained value to customers and shareholders in 2003. In September 2008, Wolters Kluwer acquired UpToDate, an evidence-based electronic clinical information resource. The following month, the company received a multi-year contract to provide prescription and patient-level data to the United States Food and Drug Administration. In 2009, Wolters Kluwer was named the "Best Place to Work" in Spain by the Great Place to Work Institute.

2010s–2020s

Wolters Kluwer Deutschland, the German subsidiary of the company, launched Legal Tribune Online in April 2010. The online magazine, which provides German-language news and analysis about current developments in law and related subjects, ranked among the top 20 most visited online professional journals.

Wolters Kluwer acquired FRSGlobal, financial regulatory reporting and risk management firm in September 2010. The acquisition enabled Wolters Kluwer to provide financial organizations comprehensive compliance and risk solutions.

The company acquired SASGAS, a financial reporting software solutions provider, to the foreign and domestic bank market in China in October 2011. That December, Wolters Kluwer acquired Medknow, an open access publisher. Also in 2011, Wolters Kluwer sold its pharmaceutical industry-related Marketing and Publishing Service division to Springer Science+Business Media, which led to a workforce reduction at its facility in Ambler, Pennsylvania, eventually leading to the site's closure in 2013.

In 2012, Wolters Kluwer acquired Acclipse, an accounting software provider, and Finarch, an integrated finance and risk solutions. The company's health division tested technology to identify and treat sepsis in December. Wolters Kluwer acquired Health Language, a medical terminology management provider, in January 2013. The company acquired CitizenHawk, an American online brand protection and global domain recovery specialist, in September 2013. That month, Wolters Kluwer acquired Svenson, an Austrian regulatory reporting solutions provider. The acquisition enabled both companies to assist Austrian banks and insurance companies in meeting national and international regulatory requirements.

The company became the fifth participant in the AAISalliance, an arrangement of information providers that make their services available for member insurance companies of the American Association of Insurance Services (AAIS) in April 2014. In May 2014, Wolters Kluwer launched UpToDate, a clinical decision support resource, in the United Kingdom. UpToDate was launched throughout Western Europe a month later. Wolters Kluwer acquired Datacert, a Houston, Texas-based enterprise legal management software and services provider in April 2014.

The company partnered with Anhembi Morumbi University, a private university in São Paulo, Brazil, to provide information and resources to healthcare students and professionals in June 2014. That month, the company's CCH eSign solution won the CPA Practice Advisor Magazine's 2014 Tax & Accounting Technology Innovation Award. The solution won the Software and Information Industry Association's "Best Enterprise Mobile Application" award that year. The company partnered with Broadridge Tax Services in August 2014 to facilitate tax reporting and reconciliation. In September, the company's UpToDate resource was released in Latin America. That month the company extended its partnership with the American Internal Revenue Service. 2014 marked the 15th year of their collaboration. Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory sold Croner Group to Peninsula Business Services in 2016 and sold Croner-i to Peninsula in 2017

In the United States, Wolters Kluwer's Legal & Regulatory Education (the education division of Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.) published casebooks and legal textbooks through its Aspen Publisher's, Inc. marquee. In 2021, Transom Capital Group purchased the Education division for US$88 million,

In June 2022, Wolters Kluwer signed and completed an agreement to acquire Level Programs S.L., a provider of legal practice management software in Spain.

Wolters Kluwer launched new TeamMate+ for internal controls and assurance professionals on July 17, 2025.

Operations

Wolters Kluwer operates under five divisions as of 2023:

• Legal & Regulatory
• Tax & Accounting
• Health
• Financial & Corporate Compliance
• Corporate Performance & ESG

The company is active in over 180 countries. 59% of the company's total revenues came from Expert Solutions in 2024.

Sustainability

Wolters Kluwer is listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. The company received the Bronze Class Sustainability Award 2014 from RobecoSAM. Wolters Kluwer is recognized as one of the "Global 100 Most Sustainable Corporations in the World" by Corporate Knights.

Lawsuits

In September 2024, Lucina Uddin, a neuroscience professor at UCLA, sued Wolters Kluwer along with five other academic journal publishers in a proposed class-action lawsuit, alleging that the publishers violated antitrust law by agreeing not to compete against each other for manuscripts and by denying scholars payment for peer review services.

References

References

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42. (October 2019}}.{{cite web). "Wolters Kluwer Buys Enablon: Another Corporate Giant Enters into the EH&S Market".
43. (13 May 2016). "CMA Gives Green Light for Peninsula Acquisition of Croner Group".
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46. (2001). "''Race, Rights, and Reparation: Law and the Japanese American Internment''". Aspen Publishers, Inc..
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48. (17 July 2025). "Wolters Kluwer Digitally Transforms Assurance With Launch of New TeamMate+ Controls Capabilities". Business Wire.
49. "Wolters Kluwer Appoints Divisional CEOs Creates Fifth Division Dedicated to Corporate Performance & ESG".
50. "Wolters Kluwer Releases 2024 Annual Report".
51. (9 September 2010). "Wolters Kluwer's Ongoing Commitment to Sustainablity Recognized in Dow Jones Sustainability World and Europe Indexes 2010".
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54. Scarcella, Mike. (13 September 2024). "Academic Publishers Face Class Action Over 'Peer Review' Pay, Other Restrictions". [[Reuters]].
55. Abdur-Rahman, Sulaiman. (13 September 2024). "'Illegal Conspiracy'?: EDNY Antitrust Class Action Challenges Publishers' Unpaid Peer Review Rule".