Publisher Macmillan India Ltd. has announced a split into two businesses - the domestic Indian publishing business, Macmillan India Publishers Ltd. (MPIL) and the international publishing services business based out of India, Macmillan India Ltd. (MIL). Rajiv Beri will lead MPIL while Rajiv Seth, who has led the publishing services business for almost two years, will run MIL.
Since MPIL will be an unlisted company, Macmillan is seeking to buy out all the minority shareholders who are willing to sell their shares. This is a projected to be a sign of Macmillan's commitment to the MPIL business and to the long-term publishing opportunities that the region represents. Julian Drinkall, Chief Executive of Macmillan Education, has been elected Chairman of MPIL. He will oversee MPIL's closer involvement with the rest of Macmillan Education.
MIL will continue to be a listed public company in India with Macmillan holding a majority stake. Many divisions of Macmillan are customers of MIL's publishing services. The new structure is expected to help focus on making these arrangements work even better, as well as enabling MIL to develop its business with other publishers worldwide. To many of these customers, the business is known as MPS (Macmillan Publishing Solutions). Separating the two businesses in this way has been a long and complicated process, but Macmillan executives are confident that the result will provide a better basis for future success.
