Rand McNally

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Ownership

Rand McNally has always been a privately held company, with stock held by very few parties and very thinly traded. When Rand retired in 1899, he sold his shares in the company to McNally and the other company officers. The McNally family was the majority owner for nearly 100 years, from 1899 until 1997, at which time the family decided to divest its majority stake. The company was sold piecemeal; in January 1997, the company announced it was selling its Book Services Group, which employed 1,700 people in Versailles, Kentucky, and Taunton, Massachusetts, to World Color Press for $155 million. In February 1997, the DocuSystems Group, which printed airline tickets and luggage tags at its Nashville facility, was sold to Code Hennessy & Simmons, a Chicago-based private equity firm. In April 1997, the Media Services Group, which employed 350 people with offices in Nashville, Tennessee; Fremont, California; Shannon, Ireland; and the Asia-Pacific region, was sold to McQueen Ltd., a Scottish software company.

The sole remaining group, publishing, represented the core mapmaking business of the company. In November 1997, the McNally family completed its divestiture by selling its majority ownership to AEA Investors for a reported $500 million. Much of the purchase price was leveraged, meaning the company took on significant debt hedging on future earnings. AEA intended to capitalize on Rand McNally's brand recognition by bringing digital mapping to the masses and attracting public investors during the dot-com boom. However, the company fell behind the technology curve of upstarts such as MapQuest and fell further into debt. AEA's stake in the company was acquired by Leonard Green & Partners through a prepackaged Chapter 11 restructuring deal on January 15, 2003. In December 2007, Patriarch Partners, which had previously been a minority owner, bought shares owned by Leonard Green and other minority owners to become the sole owner of Rand McNally. In 2020, Teleo Capital purchased Rand McNally as sole owner.

Acquisitions

Rand McNally has made many acquisitions over the years to consolidate the crowded map publishing industry or to extend its capabilities in new markets.

1980 – Transportation Data Management (TDM) – Makers of transportation mileage and routing software that continues to be used for Rand's commercial trucking products.

1984 – Denoyer-Geppert – Assets of the school map and globe publisher were assimilated into Rand's education product line.

1988 – Champion Map – Rand continued to use its facilities in Daytona Beach, Florida, until 2001. All Champion Map products had disappeared, but in 2007 Rand began using the brand on street maps for selected small markets.

1992 – Nicholstone Holdings – Subsidiary companies (Nicholstone Software Services, Nicholstone Looseleaf, and Nicholstone Bindery) were folded into Rand's Book Services Group, extending its printing and binding businesses and adding capabilities for manufacturing, packaging, and distributing computer software and documentation.

1993 – Allmaps Canada – Became a wholly owned subsidiary company, Rand McNally Canada, and was subsequently sold to Canadian Cartographics Corporation in 2008. Under contract from Rand McNally, CCC will continue to create Canadian products under the Rand McNally name and distribute U.S. products to the Canadian market.

1996 – Gousha – One of Rand McNally's longtime rivals, its 82 employees unexpectedly found their Comfort, Texas, building locked on the morning of April 18 with a note taped to the door stating that the company had been purchased by Rand McNally and all their jobs had been eliminated. Gousha's entire product line was discontinued.

1998 – Thomas Bros. Maps – The prominent Southern California mapmaker best known for its ubiquitous Thomas Guide. Rand McNally continues to brand its street guide products as "The Thomas Guide" in western U.S. markets.

1999 – King of the Road – Regional map publisher and distributor based in the Pacific Northwest, which had a previous partnership with Thomas Bros. King of the Road titles are no longer available.

2004 – Perly's – Maker of street maps for Toronto, Ontario and the surrounding areas; sold as part of Rand McNally Canada in 2008.

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Rand McNally

Rand McNally

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