Print and digital education materials provider Pearson has announced the acquisition of GlobalEnglish from its current ownership group for $90 million in cash. The transaction is subject to approval by GlobalEnglish’s shareholders.
Founded in 1997 in California, GlobalEnglish is a provider of cloud-based, on-demand Business English learning, assessment and performance support software. It serves more than 450 corporate customers, including 20 per cent of the Forbes Global 2000 companies, including General Electric, HSBC, Tata Consultancy Services and Unilever. Its product suite is uniquely suited to serve the needs of global professionals with a comprehensive offering – formal Business English learning coursework, informal and social learning capabilities, performance support tools, an enterprise collaboration platform, a mobile app, assessments and a premium one-on-one coaching service.
GlobalEnglish’s Business English content is focused on the application of Business English to real life business situations such as composing emails and participating in conference calls, and its efficacy is highly rated by global companies and their employees. About 75 percent of GlobalEnglish’s more than 200,000 active subscribers are in fast growing economies in Latin America and Asia.
The acquisition supports one of Pearson’s major priorities, which is to play a much bigger role in helping the two billion people around the world estimated to be learning English as a second or foreign language.
