The story
The Quarto Group was founded by Bob Morley, Michael Jackson and Laurence Orbach in the early 1970s and was finally established as The Quarto Group in 1976. In 1986, Quarto listed on the London stock exchange.
By the late 1990s, Quarto had acquired three new imprints, Rotovision, Book Sales Inc and Rockport Publishers and founded Quarto Children's Books, Quintet and Quintessence that published art, health, lifestyle and children's books. The group expanded further in the US – with the addition of Book Sales, Rockport Publishers, Walter Foster, Creative Publishing International, Motorbooks, and more recently, Cool Springs Press. In the UK, Quarto grew by acquiring Aurum Press and then Jacqui Small in 2004. By the 2000s, The Quarto Group had increased imprints and genres, along with this, a steady increase in its share value. In August 2011, The Quarto Group acquired independent UK book publisher Frances Lincoln for £4.5 million.
In 2012, Marcus Leaver took over from Laurence Orbach as Group CEO
By 2014, the group had started two new children's imprints: Wide Eyed Editions and Words & Pictures, and acquired Small World Creations. In 2015 Quarto acquired Ivy Press and Ivy Kids for £1.5m and continued its expansion In 2016, Quarto acquired SmartLab and becker&mayer, a co-edition publisher based in Bellevue, WA, for $9.8 million.
Quarto sold its last two non-publishing businesses in 2017 – Books & Gifts Direct (Australia/New Zealand) and Regent Publishing Services (Hong Kong) – and is now solely focused on its core publishing expertise.
From Wikipedia’s article on The Quarto Group, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7