Chairman and CEO of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
In July 2007, Houghton Mifflin Riverdeep agreed to acquire Florida based Harcourt from Reed Elsevier. The merged company was renamed Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and was owned by a Cayman Island holding company called Education Media and Publishing Group. Tony Lucki remained CEO with O'Callaghan as Chairman. EMPG has to raise additional equity to fund the purchase with the equity value of company estimated to be $2.6bn after the transaction. O'Callaghan's stake was 38% following the transaction, implying a value of circa $1bn, though again this does not reflect any related debt - O'Callaghan is known to have borrowed considerable sums from his personal bankers to cover his equity stake.
In March 2008, the Irish Independent newspaper listed O'Callaghan as the 32nd richest person in Ireland with €360m of wealth in the annual "Richest 100" list. The difference between the €360m net worth and $1bn value of his stake in EMPG is driven by debt and currency. Based on a US dollar/Euro exchange rate of 1.58 at the end of March 2008, indicates a dollar net value of $575m for O'Callaghan at the time. With an equity value of $1 billion for his stake in EMPG, this implies that he had circa $400m of personal debt and liabilities at the time.
The Sunday Times rich list for Ireland, published in April 2009 reported similar figures for O'Callaghan to the Irish Independent's 2008 survey, estimating a €348m value for his investment in EMPG. His other investments were estimated to be worth £8m.
In April 2009 on the retirement of Tony Lucki, O'Callaghan became Chairman and CEO of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
Read more about this topic: Barry O'Callaghan, Career in Education
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