Education media and Publishing Group (EMPG), the Irish publishing group formerly known as HM Riverdeep, is moving its creative staff to Ashford House at Tara Street five months after the firm rehoused its executives in developer Garrett Kelleher's luxurious 75 St Stephen's Green.
The company, led by the Cork-born financier Barry O'Callaghan, is taking over the space vacated by PwC, following the accountancy firm's relocation to Spencer Dock.
EMPG has agreed to sub-lease the second floor of Ashford House at a passing rent of €611,000 a year on a nine-year contract.
The group's creative staff are currently based at the Digital Exchange Building in the Digital Hub and it's thought these more expansive offices of 1,285sq m (13,832sq ft) at Tara Street are a result of the merger last year between HM Riverdeep and Harcourt, a leading US textbook and scientific publisher as well as a general interest publisher boasting authors like Umberto Eco, Octavio Paz and Gunter Grass.
Last September EMPG uprooted its executives from Upper Hatch Street to a plush suite at the nearby former Department of Justice block at 75 St Stephen's Green.
At the time the deal pushed headline office rents to near record highs when it emerged O'Callaghan had signed up for some 464.5sq m (5,000sq ft) at a rate of around €700 per sq m (€65 per sq ft).
At Ashford House the rate works out considerably less at €437.45 per sq m (€40.64 per sq ft).
Robert Fay of agency HT Meagher O'Reilly acted for the landlord while Conor Whelan of Atisreal negotiated on behalf of EMPG. Neither agency was willing to comment on the deal.
The $4 billion merger of HM Riverdeep with Harcourt in July 2007, produced in EMPG a publishing empire valued at more than $11 billion.
But it also transformed the company's 38-year old boss, Barry O'Callaghan, into one of Ireland's wealthiest entrepreneurs with his personal stake in the business soaring to $2.2 billion.
The cost of assembling such a corporate behemoth however has been staggering. Prior to the sale late December of its college publishing division for $750 million, the group's debt totalled $7.15 billion.
The underwriters of these loans, which equate to 400 times Riverdeep's $17 million 2005 profit, are Credit Suisse, Lehman Brothers and Citigroup, all of which have suffered to varying lengths from the international credit crunch.
And last year EMPG confirmed the banks were struggling to syndicate, or sell on the debt, as the US subprime debacle continued to wreak chaos across world money markets.
However, the group's broker, Davy, recently issued an upbeat statement showing the merger would slash EMPG's costs by up to 30 per cent.
The stockbroker underwrote about $40 million of the $235 million in new equity, which O'Callaghan raised to fund the Harcourt deal.
Riverdeep started out in 1995 as an e-learning company.
In 2006 it merged with the Boston-based Houghton Mifflin US publisher following a $4.9 billion reverse takeover - the largest deal of its kind in Irish corporate history.
The resulting company, HM Riverdeep, then engineered the recently completed $4 billion acquisition of Harcourt.
After the merger, the newly formed group EMPG moved its global headquarters to the Cayman Islands.
