Longhorn publishers to sell stake in LawAfrica

Longhorn Publishers. (Photo: Courtesy)

Longhorn Publishers is set to offload its entire shareholding in LawAfrica Publishing, hardly 17 months after acquiring a controlling stake.

The listed company said in a cautionary announcement that it has already identified a prospective buyer, even though it did not disclose the price.

“Longhorn Publishers has resolved to enter into negotiations for the sale of its entire shareholding in LawAfrica Publishing Limited following the receipt from a prospective purchaser of a letter of intent to purchase such shares,” the company announced.

The divesting deal will see the purchaser get the entire 92 per cent stake of the issued share capital of LawAfrica.

Longhorn Managing Director Simon Ngigi told The Standard in an interview that the board has had a change of strategy because it would have been expensive and legally too long a process to continue acquiring shares in every company it needs tertiary materials from.

“The tertiary segment is extremely big and law is just a small subset of it. The board has decided that instead of buying into each of the companies with tertiary books, we buy the intellectual property (IP) to market and sell the books,” he said.