Goldman Sachs to Make Minority Investment in ProQuest

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Nov. 4, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- ProQuest, a global information firm renowned for powering serious research, announced today that an affiliate of Goldman Sachs will purchase a significant minority equity interest in the Company, including the stake held by private equity firm ABRY Partners.  Goldman Sachs will join majority shareholder Cambridge Information Group (CIG) as a partner.

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"Our aim is to continue to strengthen ProQuest's industry position through organic growth, acquisitions and continuous innovation," said Kurt Sanford, CEO of ProQuest. "We are thrilled to have Goldman Sachs as an investor and we recognize their investment as affirmation of our strategy and future potential."

"With an outstanding leadership team and unique information and technology assets, ProQuest is positioned to transform the process of research in universities, libraries, schools and corporations," said Andy Snyder, CEO of CIG and Chairman of ProQuest. "We are delighted to welcome Goldman Sachs as our new partner. Their involvement will help us continue to build the business and expand its role across the research ecosystem.  In addition, we are thankful to ABRY Partners for a terrific partnership over nearly seven years, and we wish them continued success."

"ProQuest has an industry-leading management team and a world-class product offering, with a well-deserved reputation for quality customer service," said Bradley Gross of Goldman Sachs. "We are delighted to have the opportunity to partner with ProQuest and look forward to working together."

ProQuest is known for its inventive information solutions that increase the productivity of students, scholars, professionals and the libraries that serve them. Through partnerships with content holders, ProQuest preserves rich and varied information – from historical archives to modern scientific breakthroughs – and packages it with digital technologies that enhance its discovery, sharing and management. For libraries and professional organizations, ProQuest provides resources that enable strategic acquisition, management and marketing of information collections.

ProQuest's innovations are built from a broad spectrum of expertise. Its affiliate Bowker^® is acclaimed for a century of experience organizing book data via classic resources such as Books In Print^®. ProQuest's aggregation solutions are supported by renowned skills in abstracting and indexing, while its historical collections leverage unique talent in the preservation and digitization of rare archival collections. Its ebooks collection – encompassing pioneers ebrary^® and EBL^® – solve challenges related to emerging electronic formats. Other leaders include ProQuest Dialog® corporate information service, the Summon^® discovery service, research tools RefWorks Flow™, Pivot™ and Intota^®, a comprehensive library services platform.

Evercore acted as financial advisor to ProQuest on this transaction.

About Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. is a leading global investment banking, securities and investment management firm that provides a wide range of financial services to a substantial and diversified client base that includes corporations, financial institutions, governments and high-net-worth individuals. Founded in 1869, the firm is headquartered in New York and maintains offices in all major financial centers around the world. For more information on Goldman Sachs, please visit www.gs.com

About Cambridge Information Group (CIG)
Cambridge Information Group is a family owned management and investment firm, primarily focused on information services, education and technology. CIG has been investing in and building companies for long-term success for over 40 years. The executive team completed over 30 acquisitions in the last ten years including the acquisition of ProQuest Information and Learning in February 2007. Currently, the CIG family of companies employs more than 2,100 people in 26 countries. The company's website is www.cig.com

About ProQuest (www.proquest.com)
ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company's products are a gateway to the world's knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections and e-books. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create and manage information.

The company's cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students and researchers through the ProQuest^®, Bowker^®, Dialog^®, ebrary^®, EBL^® and Serials Solutions^® businesses – and notable research tools such as the Summon^® discovery service, RefWorks Flow™, Pivot™ and Intota^®, a new library services platform. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world.

SOURCE ProQuest