Tiger mums who could turn around Pearson

TIGER mums are being targeted by Pearson as it embarks on a plan to turn around losses of £404m.

The educational publisher has been hit by falling university enrolment in the US, causing a decline in demand for textbooks, as well as slowdowns in its growth markets.

Pearson now hopes to replace this lost business by selling books directly to middle-class families who want to give extra lessons to their children, and young professionals desperate to advance their careers. Tiger mothers are those who push their children had to succeed academically.

Chief executive John Fallon said its direct-to-consumer businesses ‘continue to do well and we are seeing good growth’.

He said: ‘Our revenues in Brazil overall are flat year-on-year. But within that we have middle-class parents and young professionals growing in terms of the products and services they are buying from us. These are primarily middle-class parents sending their kids to private schools or young professionals learning English as they want to become part of the global economy. And it’s a similar story in China.’

Pearson will also produce more digital publications.

Last year the publisher sold the Financial Times newspaper, along with its 50pc stake in The Economist. In January Pearson announced plans to axe 4,000 jobs from its global workforce.

Fallon said it had been a ‘tough year’, as Pearson announced that it had written down the value of its US business by £282m. It made a loss of £404m, compared with a profit of £348m for 2014, and sales for the year fell by 2pc to £4.4bn.

Fallon said that by 2018 he expected the company to be back on track, and to reach profits of £800m. Its shares rose by 34.5p, or 4.3pc, yesterday to 836p.