Has anyone seen a publisher. s press release lately without reference to the Hart-Scott-Rodino Antitrust Improvements Act of 1976? Neither have I. You know this Act. It. s the one that keeps every proposed merger in the news longer than a Kenneth Starr investigation. It is meant to keep two big business titans in suspense before they. re allowed to make bigger, bulkier business. The Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department diligently inspect for monopolistic conditions while employees furiously update their resumes. Sometimes the FTC and the Justice Department throw a rock or two off the bigger mountain, but why bother? The consolidation process usually applies reduction measured in avalanche units.

When I started in the business 25 years ago, F. A. Davis Company was the sixth largest health science publisher. Today we. re third and we haven. t passed anybody. So why do we feel like we. re ahead of the pack?

Firstly, we haven. t sold out. You won. t find us on one of the 2,407 web pages located on the Hart-Scott-Rodino web site. As the only independent, closely held health science publisher to succeed the generation of the founder, F. A. Davis has not been subject to the dreaded hyphen.

Secondly, we don. t want to sell out. We have competed very successfully against publishers much larger, only to watch them fall like the Roman Empire, eaten away by their own excesses. Today our old "friends" are being held up by the hyphens that connect them. And the hyphens can only hold so much. The publishing mass that flounders in front of us is going through the organizational liposuction associated with consolidation. The advantages of being hyphen-free have become very apparent to us.

Thirdly, our niche industry is slumping despite a favorable economy. "How is that possible?", you ask. Well, that. s the same question posed in boardrooms from Amsterdam to Los Angeles. While F. A. Davis exercises the privilege of adapting to the challenging conditions of shrinking student enrollments and an information technology revolution that seems determined only to reward a guy named Gates, our "friends" are being forced to bail out.

Lastly, we have become adept at the sport of merger-drafting. One more merger and we. re number two, at which time we. ll find out whether Hart-Scott-Rodino is just another act. The vacuum created by the consolidation epidemic is giving us many new opportunities. Consequently, F. A. Davis will continue to produce high-quality publications regardless of our ranking. These conditions are built for the survival instincts of a company in its 121^st year. Publishers, like F. A. Davis, able to make on-site publishing decisions, own the future of this industry. For that matter, we may be the only one left to tell posterity what really happened in the Great Publishing Shake-Out of the . 90s.

Who needs number one? We are F. A. Davis the unhyphenated company.

	President's Letters 2009 2008 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2001-02 2000 1998 1997 1996
Robert H. Craven, Jr.