Springer Nature

About Springer Nature

Springer Nature is a German-British academic publisher, formally Springer Nature AG & Co. KGaA, with its registered office at Heidelberger Platz 3 in Berlin.^[1] Wikipedia places its global head office in London, its corporate one in Berlin and its sales office in New York.^[2] It was created by the May 2015 merger of Springer Science+Business Media, then held by BC Partners, with Holtzbrinck Publishing Group's Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan and Macmillan Education; Holtzbrinck took the majority 53 per cent share.^[2] Its journals and books, among them Nature, Springer, BMC and Palgrave Macmillan, brought in revenue of 1,946.3 million euro in 2025.^[1] The shares have traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange since 4 October 2024 and joined the SDAX index that December.^[3]

Two majority shareholders hold the company under a voting rights pooling agreement: GvH Vermögensverwaltungsgesellschaft XXXIII mbH of Stuttgart, a wholly owned subsidiary of Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH & Co. KG, and Springer Science+Business Media Galileo Participation S.à r.l. of Luxembourg, a majority-owned and controlled indirect subsidiary of funds advised by BC Partners LLP.^[1][4] Management sits with the general partner, Springer Nature Management Aktiengesellschaft, whose shares the same two shareholders hold; GvH 33 nominates three supervisory board members and the chair, SSBMG two and the deputy chair, and the two jointly nominate three independent members.^[1][4] German Wikipedia puts the Holtzbrinck group's holding at 50.6 per cent and BC Partners' at 34.8 per cent, with 14.6 per cent in free float.^[3] The share capital is 198,888,989 euro, divided into as many no-par bearer shares admitted to the Prime Standard of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.^[1]

The group's constituent houses reach back to Springer-Verlag, founded in Berlin in 1842, to Nature, published since 1869, and to Macmillan Publishers, founded in 1843.^[2] Attempts to float the group in May 2018 and in autumn 2020 were abandoned in unfavourable markets; a shareholders' meeting on 5 April 2018 had already resolved the conversion into the present partnership limited by shares, registered in Berlin under HRB 195463 B.^[2][3] The company carried the name Springer SBM Zero GmbH before that conversion.^[5] In 2021 it acquired the open-access publisher Atlantis Press, and in June 2026 it sold Scientific American to LabX Media Group.^[2] The group serves its book brands, Apress among them, from the Springer Nature Link platform.^[6]