ProQuest Business Solutions to Acquire Syncata Corporation

New Technical Capabilities to Broaden Portfolio of Solutions for the Automotive Market

RICHFIELD, Ohio, Feb. 3 -- ProQuest Business Solutions, a subsidiary of ProQuest Company , a leading electronic publisher for the education and automotive markets, has signed a definitive merger agreement to acquire privately held Syncata Corporation. The company expects the acquisition to close in the next several days subject to various closing conditions.

Founded in 1990, Syncata Corporation is a business consulting and systems integration firm that helps automotive and automotive finance companies solve specific business problems within sales and distribution, service and parts, warranty and quality, dealer management, and automotive finance. Syncata has helped companies reduce order-to-delivery cycle time, increase inventory turns, improve part quality, and increase the performance of vehicle and equipment finance programs. In 2004 Syncata generated revenue of approximately $10 million. Syncata's revenue is expected to grow about 20 percent in 2005.

"Through the acquisition of Syncata, we will bring new solutions to our existing customers and gain strategic technical capabilities, along with operating efficiency, productivity and cost reduction," said Andy Wyszkowski, president of ProQuest Business Solutions. "We expect Syncata's technical capabilities will broaden our portfolio of solutions for automotive OEMs and dealers."

Syncata Profile

Based in El Segundo, California, Syncata also has an offshore development center subsidiary near New Delhi, India. Syncata leverages its offshore capabilities to deliver practical ROI-driven solutions to their customers that increase efficiencies, lower costs and improve levels of service.

Syncata is a three-time recipient of American Honda Motor Co., Inc.'s Premier Partner Award, most recently in 2003, for their role in the design and development of Honda's eStore electronic commerce system suite. Syncata also provides information technology systems integration services to Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc.

Co-founder brothers, Aloke and Ujj Nath, and Syncata's senior management team will remain with the company. "Ujj, I and the entire Syncata management team are extremely excited about joining a company that is highly respected in the automotive markets," said Aloke Nath. "ProQuest is a leader in providing parts information and performance measurement solutions to OEMs and dealers, and we are excited about the opportunities to deliver our solutions to new markets and contribute toward the future success of our combined organization."

About ProQuest Company

ProQuest Company is based in Ann Arbor, Mich., and is a leading publisher of information solutions for the education, automotive and power equipment markets. We provide products and services to our customers through two business segments: Information and Learning and Business Solutions. Through our Information and Learning segment, which primarily serves the education market, we collect, organize and publish content from wide range of sources including newspapers, periodicals and books. Our Business Solutions segment is primarily engaged in the delivery in electronic form of comprehensive parts and service information to the automotive market. Its products transform complex technical data, like parts catalogs and service manuals, into easily accessed electronic information. For the world's automotive manufacturers and their dealer networks, ProQuest also secures business-to-business information and retail performance management services. ProQuest Company was recently named one of the nation's 200 best small companies by Forbes magazine, and one of the 100 fastest growing technology companies in the United States by Business 2.0 magazine.

About Syncata Corporation

Founded in 1990, Syncata provides business and technology consulting, systems integration, and application development, maintenance and support services to automotive and industrial manufacturing companies. Within these segments, Syncata helps companies design and implement strategy, process and technology solutions within the sales, finance, distribution and service operations. In an effort to help companies speed time to market, increase productivity and improve responsiveness to market changes, the firm's Application Development Framework(SM) leverages pre-built software development components that are easily, quickly and cost-effectively assembled, configured, customized and re-used for individual applications and across multiple business systems. In addition, Syncata's TREAD reporting engine enables vehicle and equipment manufacturers to efficiently generate and submit warranty claim, consumer complaints and other data to NHTSA. Through this software solution and specialist consulting service, Syncata assists affected companies to achieve and maintain their regulatory compliance requirements. Syncata is a three-time recipient of American Honda Motor Co., Inc.'s Premier Partner Award given to vendors for outstanding service, value and innovation. The firm has offices in El Segundo, California and New Delhi, India. http://www.syncata.com/

Forward-Looking Statements

Some of the statements contained herein constitute forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause our or our markets' actual results, levels of activity, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. These risks and other factors you should specifically consider include, but are not limited to: increased debt level due to the acquisition of Voyager, changes in customer demands or industry standards, adverse economic conditions, loss of key personnel, litigation, decreased library and educational funding/budgets, delays in the receipt of necessary regulatory approvals, the satisfaction of other closing conditions, the ability to successfully integrate the Voyager acquisition, the ability to successfully close and integrate other acquisitions, demand for ProQuest's products and services, success of ongoing product development, maintaining acceptable margins, ability to control costs, the impact of federal, state and local regulatory requirements on ProQuest's business, including K-12 and higher education, and automotive, the impact of competition and the uncertainty of economic conditions in general, the ability to successfully attract and retain customers, sell additional products to existing customers, and win new business due to changes in technology, the ability to maintain a broad customer base to avoid dependence on any one single customer, K-12 enrollment and demographic trends, the level of educational funding, the level of education technology investments, the company's ability to obtain OEM data access agreements, the company's ability to obtain financing, global economic conditions, financial market performance, and other risks listed under "Risk Factors" in our regular filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "should," "expects," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," "continue," "projects," "intends," "prospects," "priorities," or the negative of such terms or other comparable terminology. These statements are only predictions. Actual events or results may differ materially.

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