Berkery, Noyes & Company advises The Economics Press Inc. in its sale of Bits & Pieces to Lawrence Ragan Communications, Inc.

NEW YORK, May 15, 2001  — Joseph Berkery, President of Berkery, Noyes & Company, announced today that his firm represented The Economics Press Inc. in its sale of Bits & Pieces to Lawrence Ragan Communications, Inc. The Economics Press Inc., of Fairfield, New Jersey, is a publisher of motivational and training materials worldwide. Founded in 1953, Economics Press publishes Bits & Pieces, the pocket-sized, motivational magazine, which is its flagship publication. Tagged "the magazine that motivates the world," the 24-page Bits & Pieces is released fourteen times a year, and is read by more than 250,000 people internationally. The sale also includes Leadership … with a human touch, hardcover compilations of Bits & Pieces, and other spin-off ancillaries, all of which will be folded into Lawrence Ragan’s existing operations. According to Dwight Johnson, Managing Director of Berkery, Noyes, "Bits & Pieces makes an excellent strategic fit with Ragan Communications, and they have the wherewithal to grow the publication."

Lawrence Ragan Communications, Inc., of Chicago, Illinois, has been the leading publisher of corporate communications, public relations, and leadership development newsletters. Its flagship newsletter, The Ragan Report, was founded in 1970 and is read by employee communications professionals in most Fortune 500 companies. The Ragan brand now includes over sixteen targeted newsletters in the areas of employee communication, Web PR, organizational writing and editing, sales and marketing, media relations, motivational management, and investor relations, as well as the production of several communications conferences, workshops, and senior-level forums.

Berkery, Noyes specializes in investment banking for the information, publishing and communications industries. Among the transactions completed by Berkery, Noyes are the following: Reed Elsevier’s divestiture of Springhouse Corporation to Wolters Kluwer, the acquisition of K.G. Saur Verlag by The Thomson Corporation’s Gale Group, Boston Venture’s purchase of Trade Service Corporation, and the acquisition of Corporate Technology Information Services by OneSource Information Services, Inc.

Berkery, Noyes & Company clients range from small firms, often seeking a buyer, to most of the major international information companies, who use the firm’s expertise in locating, analyzing and negotiating with acquisition candidates, as well as in managing divestitures. The firm operates with a staff of twenty-two professionals serving the publishing industry from offices in New York, Boston, San Francisco and Frankfurt, Germany.