Pearson plc

Pearson plc is a British multinational education and assessment company headquartered in London, England, offering learning materials, assessments, qualifications, virtual learning, English-language learning and enterprise learning and skills services. It traces its origins to S. Pearson & Son, a nineteenth-century Yorkshire construction firm founded in 1844 that grew under Weetman Pearson, 1st Viscount Cowdray, into one of the world's largest engineering contractors before pivoting toward publishing and media in the twentieth century through acquisitions including the Financial Times in 1957, Longman in 1968 and Penguin Books in 1970. Between 2015 and 2020 Pearson divested the Financial Times, its stake in The Economist and its holding in Penguin Random House to concentrate on education and learning technology; as of 2025 the company reported revenue of 3.6 billion pounds and about 17,000 employees, and it is listed on the London Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange as a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.