O’Callaghan’s ambitious vision was education media firm’s driving force

EMPG, or Education Media & Publishing Group, began life in its current guise in 2007 with the $4 billion takeover of the Harcourt US Schools Education business from European information and publishing group Reed Elsevier.

Prior to that, the company went under the name HM Riverdeep, a label which neatly represented the 2006 $5bn post-debt merger between Dublin-founded e-learning product supplier Riverdeep and US educational publisher Houghton Mifflin.

Riverdeep had grown fast since its Dublin birth in the mid-1990s, driven by the ambitious vision of Cork-born former international investment banker Barry O’Callaghan once he took over the reins in 1999.