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With $1.3 Billion and No Pink Paper, Pearson Goes Back to School

Bundles of the Financial Times newspaper sit at a John Menzies Plc distribution center in London, on July 23,. — Bundles of the Financial Times newspaper sit at a John Menzies Plc distribution center in London, on July 23,.
Photographer: Simon Dawson/Bloomberg

By

Kristen Schweizer and Laura Colby

August 3, 2015, 1:02 PM UTC

With its sale of the Financial Times and efforts to offload its half-interest in The Economist, Pearson Plc is exiting a troubled industry to expand in one that’s struggling to grow.

Chief Executive Officer John Fallon says he plans to use the proceeds from the two publications to shore up an education business that has lost three key U.S. contracts in the past 16 months and slashed jobs to counter declining textbook sales.