'Pearson was founded by Samuel Pearson in 1844 as S. Pearson and Son, a small building firm in Yorkshire, England. The firm was passed to his son and eventually grandson, Weetman Pearson, who from 1880 developed Pearson into one of the world's largest building contractors, with works ranging from Europe to China to Latin America. Born in 1856, Weetman Pearson enjoyed a privileged education befitting a future magnate, but honed his formidable business skills through direct experience. From the outset, Pearson set up a company with a global perspective. Upon taking control of the company in 1880, W. Pearson moved the business to London and set his sights on bigger opportunities overseas. The docks he built at Milford Haven and Southampton in England led him to projects further afield such as the construction of the Halifax docks in Nova Scotia, Canada and even the Manhattan Tunnel project. He built railroads that criss-crossed Spain, Colombia, China and Mexico; harbours in Dover, England, Vera Cruz, Mexico and Valparaiso in Chile. He even built the Sennar dam in Egypt. Other contracts covered reservoirs, tunnels and factories. By the end of his career, he had ventured into the oil business and energy, illuminating Mexico and Chile with energy generated by the countries' first hydroelectric plants. Throughout his career, Weetman Pearson was committed to public works with a social conscience. http://www.pearson.com/about/history.htm
'Pearson had dabbled in ownership of UK political journals from the turn of the century (see Stephen Koss' The Rise & Fall of the Political Press in Britain (London: Hamish Hamilton 1984)), notably through ownership of the Westminster Gazette. In 1920 the group acquired a string of undistinguished but profitable provincial newspapers such as the Brighton Evening Argus and The Oxford Mail, organised as the Westminister Press.
Pearson became a major investor in the London end of the Lazard Brothers merchant bank and took stakes in the 1950s version of dot-coms such as British Overseas Airways.
It gained control of the Financial Times in 1957, with a stake in the Economist, and later bought book publishers Longman (1968) and Penguin (1971) before going public in 1969.
After buying control of Chateau Latour in 1963 it grabbed waxworks and theme park operator Madame Tussauds (1978), the Royal Doulton ceramics group (merged with its Allied English Potteries in 1972) and a diverse collection of general interest magazines in the UK and US.' http://www.ketupa.net/pearson.htm (Sighted 20/01/05)
