Wolters Kluwer

Wolters Kluwer N.V. (Euronext: WKL) is a global information services company. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, Netherlands. Wolters Kluwer in its current form was founded in 1987 with a merger between Kluwer Publishers and Wolters Samson. The company serves legal, business, tax, accounting, finance, audit, risk, compliance, and healthcare markets. It operates in over 150 countries.Nancy McKinstry serves as chief executive officer of the company.

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. The two publishing houses merged in 1968. Wolters-Noordhoff merged with Information and Communications Union (ICU) in 1972 and took the name ICU. ICU changed its name to Wolters-Samson in 1983. The company began serving foreign law firms and multinational companies in China in 1985. In 1987, Elsevier, the largest publishing house in the Netherlands, announced its intentions to buy up Kluwer’s stock. Kluwer merged with Wolters-Samson to fend off Elsevier’s take-over bid and formed Wolters Kluwer. The merger made Wolters Kluwer the second largest publishing house in the Netherlands.