ANN ARBOR, Mich., Jan. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- The Board of
Directors of ProQuest Company and Alan Aldworth announced today that they
have mutually agreed that Aldworth will leave his position as ProQuest's
Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and as a Director,
effective immediately. Richard Surratt, the company's Chief Financial
Officer, will become ProQuest's President and CEO. David Asai, the
company's Controller, will become ProQuest's Chief Financial Officer.
William E. Oberndorf, Managing Director, SPO Partners & Co., will become
the Chairman of ProQuest's Board of Directors. Ronald Klausner will remain
President of ProQuest Education and Voyager Expanded Learning.
"The Board and Alan determined together that this is the right time to
make this change," the Board of Directors said. "We want to thank Alan for
his deep commitment to ProQuest during the period of time he has served as
the company's Chairman, President and CEO."
The Board went on to say, "Richard Surratt is a leader who has
demonstrated the ability to keep the organization focused and moving
forward aggressively, and we are confident that he is the right person to
serve in this role. Richard now has in place a capable finance team that is
driving the company's restatement process under his direction. The Board
looks forward to working closely with Richard and the management team as we
continue to execute at Voyager, finalize the restatement process, and
evaluate the best long-term course of action for the company, its
shareholders, customers, and employees."
About ProQuest Company
ProQuest Company (NYSE: PQE) is based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and is a
publisher of information and education solutions. We provide products and
services to our customers through two business segments: ProQuest Education
and ProQuest Information and Learning. Our Education segment, which
includes the Voyager Expanded Learning business, serves the K-12 market. It
is a leading provider of K-12 curriculum products, in-school core reading
programs, reading and math intervention programs, and professional
development programs for school districts throughout the United States.
ProQuest Information and Learning serves the higher education and public
library markets, and is a world leader in collecting, organizing, and
publishing high-quality research resources for researchers, faculty, and
students in libraries and schools. It is widely known for its strengths in
business and economics; general reference; genealogy; humanities; social
sciences; and scientific, technical and medical (STM) content. Information
and Learning develops products comprising periodicals, newspapers,
dissertations, out-of-print books, and other scholarly information from
more than 9,000 publishers worldwide.
Forward-Looking Statements
Some of the statements contained herein constitute forward-looking
statements. These statements relate to future events, the results of our
pending restatement process, or our future financial performance and
involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may
cause our or our markets' actual results, levels of activity, performance
or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels
of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such
forward-looking statements. These risks and other factors you should
specifically consider include, but are not limited to the Company's ability
to successfully conclude the review and restatement of its financial
results, the discovery of additional restatement items, the ability to
renegotiate the terms of its revolving credit agreement and senior notes in
connection with defaults under such debt due to any potential restatement
if further defaults occur, ability to support its current debt level, the
Company's ability to refinance its outstanding debt and working capital
needs, changes in customer demands or industry standards, adverse economic
conditions, loss of key personnel, litigation, decreased library and
educational funding/budgets, the ability to consummate the ProQuest
Information and Learning segment transaction, including the risk that the
buyer might not obtain financing, demand for ProQuest's products and
services, success of ongoing product development, maintaining acceptable
margins, ability to control costs, the impact of federal, state and local
regulatory requirements on ProQuest's business including K-12 and higher
education, the impact of competition and the uncertainty of economic
conditions in general, the ability to successfully attract and retain
customers, sell additional products to existing customers, and win new
business due to changes in technology, the ability to maintain a broad
customer base to avoid dependence on any one single customer, K-12
enrollment and demographic trends, the level of educational funding, the
level of education technology investments, the Company's ability to obtain
financing, global economic conditions, financial market performance, and
other risks listed under "Risk Factors" in our regular filings with the
Securities and Exchange Commission. In some cases, you can identify
forward- looking statements by terminology such as "may," "should,"
"expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts,"
"potential," "continue," "projects," "intends," "prospects," "priorities,"
or the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology. These
statements are only predictions. Actual events or results may differ
materially. The Company undertakes no obligation to update any of these
statements.
SOURCE ProQuest Company
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Related links:
http://www.proquestcompany.com
http://www.prnewswire.com/comp/108291.html /
CONTACT:
Jennifer Chelune, Investor Relations Manager
of ProQuest Company, +1-734-997-4910, or
jennifer.chelune@proquest.com
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