I'm curious if anyone is currently being affected by this news piece.  Is there merit in worrying?

Kerry Gibson

-----Original Message-----
From: An informal list open to members of the serials community [mailto:LIS-SERIALS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK]
Sent: Tuesday, September 21, 2004 11:15 AM
To: LIS-SERIALS@JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: FW: Financial Times about Swets

Apologies if people have already seen this - thought it might be of interest to list members.

          Swets at brink of ruin after accounting fault banks demand capital injection
        Gerben Van Der Marel

                Amsterdam – Swets & Zeitlinger, Dutch distributors of scientific information, are in trouble. The business needs refinancing after it was found that it made losses in the past years.

        As a consequence of the problems Swets no longer meets the credit conditions of the bank. On Friday, shareholders will decide on a capital injection of ˆ 45 million.

                    This is confirmed by Jan-Willem Baud, chairman of the board of supervisory directors. Baud is the director of NPM Capital, which holds 26% of the shares of Swets. Other shareholders are the Swets family (29%)[1] <outbind://51/#_ftn1> , Nesbic (23%), Paribas (15%), and Alpinvest (7%). The business has approx. 1400 employees in 23 offices.

                    NPM has promised new money. Baud: “We believe that Swets can go on for another hundred years in spite of the problems.” Other shareholders are still hesitant about whether or not they should jump to the rescue, says Baud.

                    Already in May it became public that Swets had found ‘errors’ in their books. And that hundreds of jobs will be scrapped.

                    Just last year Swets was still being offered for sale to international high-risk venture capitalists with a price tag of hundreds of millions. One buyer, Candover, pulled out in the last minute.

        Swets is an intermediary between scientific publishers and major users such as universities. The company suffers from the increasing distribution of information through the Internet. Attempts to become more electronically active themselves have not panned out as predicted by the management.

                    The last figures published by Swets pertain to 2002, when – according to the information – a turnover of ˆ 1.2 billion and a net profit of ˆ 30.8 million were achieved. Swets now has to review the figures over 2001, 2002, and 2003.

                    According to Baud, transactions between parent companies and subsidiaries were processed incorrectly for years. Swets presently cannot give insight into the adjusted results. As a consequence of debit transfers, which Baud does not want to specify, Swets ends up in the red. “But non-recurring items do not get us into loss. Profits do have to increase though.”

                    Fraud, says Baud, was not discovered. Finance director Eelco de Boer is said to have stumbled across errors of his predecessor after taking up office last year. Whether these events will have consequences for director Eric van Amerongen or other managers, Baud does not want to disclose ahead of the shareholders’ meeting next Friday.

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        [1] <outbind://51/#_ftnref1>  Wij verzoeken u dit getal te controleren (niet goed leesbaar in de originele tekst).

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Kerry Gibson
Technical Services Librarian
Manhattanville College Library
Ph: (914) 323-7152
Fx: (914) 694-8139
gibsonk@mville.edu
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