Tag Archives: Barry O’Callaghan

Briefly Noted

Briefly Noted | HMH Restructuring Debt, Will File Prepackaged Bankruptcy

May 14, 2012 – 3:40 pm

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, still struggling with a heavy debt burden despite an earlier capital restructuring, is once again looking to rework its debt. In an announcement this morning, the company said it had reached an agreement with the majority of its lenders that will eliminate $3.1 billion of debt and reduce its annual interest payments by about $250 million.

As part of the restructuring, HMH will file for prepackaged Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York within 10 days. It hopes to be out of bankruptcy by the end of June.

In a letter to employees, CEO Linda Zecher said there are no plans for layoffs and that vendors and suppliers will be paid in full. “This process will have no impact on our day-to-day operations. We will continue normal business operations, now and throughout the process. We expect there will be no disruption to our relationships with our employees, customers, business partners, suppliers or vendors,” Zecher wrote.

via HMH Restructuring Debt, Will File Prepackaged Bankruptcy.

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O'Callaghan Out At Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

March 16, 2011 – 10:04 am

Barry O’Callaghan has resigned his position as CEO at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. The current Chief Financial Officer, Michael Muldowney, who has been with the company since 2007, will replace him for an interim period.

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt went through a painful debt restructure in 2010 that saw shareholders wiped out. At the time O’Callaghan said that he was one of the worst affected.

O’Callaghan’s Riverdeep company built the publishing conglomerate by acquiring Houghton Mifflin and then Reed Elsevier’s education arm, Harcourt, before the collapse of credit markets in 2007.

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For our coverage of the restructure last year click here.

For more comprehensive coverage, The Financial Times, has the best background and context, while these Daily Finance stories from last year go into more details on the debt restructure.

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Quick Link | [More Bad News For O'Callaghan's HMH] After Flouting Print Run Limits, Publisher Faces Dozens of Lawsuits

November 30, 2010 – 10:03 am

Photographers, photo agencies, artists, and others who have contributed content to textbook publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt have filed more than 30 copyright infringement claims over the past five years in federal courts in Alaska, Florida, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New York, Arizona, and other states. More claims are in the works, says attorney Chris Seidman of Harmon & Seidman LLC, which has represented most of the plaintiffs and has so far won settlements for about 20 of them.

“The scheme that Houghton employed was to license for the lowest amount it thought it could get away with, and then print whatever it wanted,” Seidman says. One HMH executive said in a court deposition that the publisher ignored print run limits in its photo licenses as meaningless numbers.

“It’s a compelling story of corporate greed and malfeasance,” says Seidman. “This venerable publisher has lost it’s way and veered off on a bad path of cheating the people who contribute to its existence, without whose contributions it wouldn’t exist.”

via After Flouting Print Run Limits, Publisher Faces Dozens of Lawsuits.

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CJ Fallon & HMH Launch Irish Version Of Destination Maths

August 3, 2010 – 10:40 am

Irish Educational publisher CJ Fallon has worked with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (HMH) to launch a localised version of HMH’s internationally used Destination Maths.

The site is based on CJ Fallon’s Mathemagic series and can be access on the website DestinationMaths.ie.

HMH, formerly know as Riverdeep, is headed by Irishman Barry O’Callaghan. Earlier this year it underwent a radical refinancing that wiped put considerable shareholder value.

The division behind this development is HMH Innovation based in Dublin.

CJ Fallon is one of Ireland’s oldest and best known educational publishers.

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O'Callaghan's Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Releases Statement on Financial Restructure

February 24, 2010 – 7:35 am

Following the news from Daily Finance on Monday (covered here) that the restructure was a done deal, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt released a statement confirming the changes to the company’s financial structure claiming:

As a result of the $650-million equity investment combined with the current senior lenders’ conversion of approximately 60% of their secured debt to equity, HMH will have the strongest capital structure in its history and the financial flexibility to continue to build the world’s leading education company. This development, coupled with previous changes in the capital structure, will reduce annual interest by more than 75%.

Barry O’Callaghan was quoted as saying:

With this important development, HMH will have successfully completed a comprehensive balance sheet deleveraging that places it on the strongest financial footing in the Company’s history and positions it for continued success. Thanks to the overwhelming support from our investor base, which sees unparalleled value in our underlying business and our future prospects, we now have greater financial flexibility and freedom with a vastly improved capital structure.

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Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Confirms Shareholder Value Destruction

February 22, 2010 – 9:46 pm

Barry O’Callaghan‘s Education Media Publishing Group is close to closing its refinancing deal. The deal will see Irish investors wiped out as previously reported in early January [see our reports here (1) & here (2)].

Sarah Weinman has the exclusive and writes in Daily Finance today:

it looks as if the restructuring plan, which would inject $650 million of fresh capital and wipe out at least $475 million in the stakes of existing private-equity holders, will be completed on or around March 9.

According to an internal memo obtained by DailyFinance, EMPG CEO Barry O’Callaghan confirms earlier reports, saying that the new cash infusion “will be combined with our current lenders’ conversion of approximately 60% of their secured debt to equity in our Company. Coupled with previous changes in the capital structure, we will reduce the amount we pay for annual interest by more than 75%, giving us greater liquidity for growth.”

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The Weekly Round Up – Irish Publishing News, Week Two

January 18, 2010 – 8:35 am

frosted jack-o-lantern
Creative Commons License photo credit: waferboard

The articles and features of the second week of Irish Publishing News.

Thanks for your support, looking forward to week three.

Instant Weekly Roundup - Free WordPress Plugin
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News Publishing

Barry O'Callaghan Gets Coverage

January 18, 2010 – 8:30 am

Following some very positive coverage in the Irish Times last week, Barry O’Callaghan was given a less pleasing covering by the Sunday Independent:

BARRY O’Callaghan bet the ranch and lost big time. The Clongowes-educated financier was briefly worth “well north of a billion” before he was 40. Ever so briefly. Now with the implosion of his debt-laden publishing firm EMPG he is back to being an ordinary wage slave.

In another story, the Sunday Independent also covered the well-known Irish people who have been hurt financially by the crisis at EMPG:

Superquinn founder Feargal Quinn is thought to have invested up to €16m in Barry O’Callaghan’s EMPG publishers, which was involved in crisis talks over its €8bn debt mountain last week. Mr Quinn, who banked up to €400m from the sale of his Superquinn empire to property developers at the peak of the boom, is understood to have been one of the largest Irish investors in Mr O’Callaghan’s publishing outfit.

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News Publishing

Education Media Publishing Group Morning Update

January 14, 2010 – 8:46 am

UPDATED: LINKS FOR FRIDAY 15th JANUARY 2010

Barry O’Callaghan (CEO of EMPG) spoke on Morning Ireland this morning. The Audio is at the end of the RTÉ article.

Wednesday saw the news leak out slowly and some of the media outlets you might have expected to report in Educational Media Publishing Group‘s troubles didn’t.

This morning most of them seem to have made up for that. What is clear is that the massive debts are to be restructured leaving a group of Irish investors seriously out of pocket.

In a radio interview on RTÉ on Thursday 14th January Barry O’Callaghan confirmed that the group was restructuring and that there would be a loss of value in the order of SEVERAL BILLION. He was personally losing several hundred million.

I’ve updated this list of stories with the newest links:
read more »

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