HarperCollins Publishers L. L. C. is one of the world's largest publishing companies and is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan. The company is a subsidiary of News Corp.. The name is a combination of several publishing firm names: Harper & Row, an American publishing company acquired in 1987, together with UK publishing company William Collins, acquired in 1990; the worldwide CEO of HarperCollins is Brian Murray. HarperCollins has publishing groups in the United States, the United Kingdom, New Zealand and China; the company publishes many different imprints, both former independent publishing houses and new imprints. In 1989, Collins was bought by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, the publisher was combined with Harper & Row, which NewsCorp had acquired two years earlier. In addition to the simplified and merged name, the logo for HarperCollins was derived from the torch logo for Harper and Row, the fountain logo for Collins, which were combined into a stylized set of flames atop waves.

In 1990, HarperCollins sold J. B. Lippincott & Co. its medical publishing division, to the Dutch publisher Wolters Kluwer. In 1996, HarperCollins sold Scott Foresman and HarperCollins College to Pearson, who merged them with Addison-Wesley Longman. In 1999, News Corporation purchased the Hearst Book Group, consisting of William Morrow & Company and Avon Books; these imprints are now published under the rubric of HarperCollins. HarperCollins bought educational publisher Letts and Lonsdale in March 2010. In 2011, HarperCollins announced; the purchase was completed on July 11, 2012, with an announcement that Thomas Nelson would operate independently given the position it has in Christian book publishing. Both Thomas Nelson and Zondervan were organized as imprints, or "keystone publishing programs," under a new division, HarperCollins Christian Publishing. Key roles in the reorganization were awarded to former Thomas Nelson executives. In 2012, HarperCollins acquired part of the trade operations of John Son in Canada.

In 2014, HarperCollins acquired Canadian romance publisher Harlequin Enterprises for C$455 million. In 2018, HarperCollins acquired the business publisher Amacom from the American Management Association. Brian Murray, the current CEO of HarperCollins, succeeded Jane Friedman, CEO from 1997 to 2008. Notable management figures include Lisa Sharkey, current senior vice president and director of creative development and Barry Winkleman from 1989 to 1994. In April 2012, the United States Department of Justice filed United States v. Apple Inc. naming Apple, HarperCollins, four other major publishers as defendants. The suit alleged that they conspired to fix prices for e-books, weaken Amazon.com's position in the market, in violation of antitrust law. In December 2013, a federal judge approved a settlement of the antitrust claims, in which HarperCollins and the other publishers paid into a fund that provided credits to customers who had overpaid for books due to the price-fixing, it was announced to employees and later in the day on November 5, 2012, that HarperCollins was closing its remaining two U.

S. warehouses, in order to merge shipping and warehousing operations with R. R. Donnelley in Indiana; the Scranton, Pennsylvania warehouse closed in September 2013 and a Nashville, Tennessee warehouse, under the name Thomas Nelson, in the winter of 2013. Several office positions and departments continued to work for HarperCollins in Scranton, but in a new location; the Scranton warehouse closing eliminated 200 jobs, the Nashville warehouse closing eliminated up to 500 jobs. HarperCollins closed two U. S. warehouses, one in Williamsport, Pennsylvania in 2011 and another in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 2012. “We have taken a long-term, global view of our print distribution and are committed to offering the broadest possible reach for our authors," said HarperCollins Chief Executive Brian Murray, according to Publishers Weekly."We are retooling the traditional distribution model to ensure we can competitively offer the entire HarperCollins catalog to customers regardless of location.” Company officials attribute the closings and mergers to the growing demand for e-book formats and the decline in print purchasing.

HarperCollins maintains the backlist of many of the books published by their many merged imprints, in addition to having picked up new authors since the merger. Authors published by Harper include Mark Twain, the Brontë sisters and William Makepeace Thackeray. Authors published by Collins include H. G. Wells and Agatha Christie. HarperCollins acquired the publishing rights to J. R. R. Tolkien's work in 1990 when Unwin Hyman was bought; this is a list of some of the more noted books, series, published by HarperCollins and their various imprints and merged publishing houses. The Hobbit, J. R. R. Tolkien The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien The Art of Loving, Erich Fromm Master and Commander, Patrick O'Brian the Leaphorn and Chee books, Tony Hillerman The Silmarillion, J. R. R. Tolkien Collins

Egon Zehnder is a global management consulting and executive search firm. Egon Zehnder is the world's largest held executive search firm and the third largest executive search and talent strategy firm globally; the firm offers services in Board Consulting and Leadership Strategy Services. The firm was founded in 1964 by Egon P. S. Zehnder and would grow to having 68 offices in 40 countries. In 1992, The Wall Street Journal reported that Dr. Zehnder, who at the time was 62, had transitioned out of running the firm and that A. Daniel Meiland, the firm's regional director for North America, would be named chairman of the executive committee and chief executive officer of the company. In 2000, The Wall Street Journal reported that Egon Zehnder International was the largest executive search firm in Europe. From 2008 to 2014, Damien O’Brien was the chief executive officer. O'Brien served as Chairman from 2010 to 2018. Jill Ader is his successor, was elected as Chairperson June 2018. Edilson Camara serves as CEO In 2013, The Wall Street Journal reported the firm has some 1,200 employees, including 420 consultants.

In early 2013, the firm rebranded worldwide. Egon Zehnder introduced Leaders & Daughters in March 2015 in London to provide a forum for addressing both the gender divide and the opportunity gap faced by the next generation of women leaders; the event brings together leaders and their daughters and mentees to discuss the obstacles women leaders face and how to tackle such obstacles. The event, which marks its 6th year in 2020, is held across 32 cities worldwide and over 5,000 attendees annually; as part of the Leaders & Daughters initiative, Egon Zehnder invites leaders to write letters to their daughters to collectively inspire and pave a better future for the next generation of female leaders. Egon Zehnder has conducted exclusive research on diversity and leadership; the Leaders & Daughters 2017 survey explores findings from over 7,000 professional female respondents worldwide in Australia, China, India, the United States and the United Kingdom on topics ranging from career motivations and ambition to professional advancement and key influencers.

Egon Zehnder's The CEO: A Personal Reflection surveyed 402 CEOs from various industries and corporate structures. They shared perspectives on the realities of the role, their preparation, their succession planning process, how they lead and cope in these volatile times. Egon Zehnder has tracked gender and international diversity on boards around the world for the past 14 years; the 2012 European Board Diversity Analysis looked at the boards of 353 of the largest companies across 17 European countries between May and June 2012. The analysis aims to contrast and compare the progress made by European companies in diversifying their boards. Data was gathered to measure how many women are engaged as board members in Europe, what is the nature of their engagement – executive roles vs. non-executive roles, leadership roles on the board or within committees – and whether women’s participation on boards has increased or decreased over time. The research looked at wider definitions of diversity such as non-national board memberships.

The 2014 European Board Diversity Analysis – the sixth in a series of biennial studies initiated in 2004 – profiles the boards of 356 of the largest companies across 17 European countries. The 2014 study includes a global perspective, exploring gender diversity across 568 large company boards in other regions of the world; the Egon Zehnder 2016 Global Board Diversity Analysis evaluates board data from 1,491 public companies with market capitalization exceeding EUR 6bn across 44 countries. Their 2018 report, Who's Really on Board?, analyzes BoardEx data from 1,610 public companies with market caps above 7 billion euros in 44 different countries as of May 2018. In countries with fewer large companies, they use the six largest companies as measured by market capitalization. Official website The Focus online Leaders & Daughters Official website

The 1980 Plesetsk launch pad disaster refers to the explosion of a Vostok-2M rocket carrying a Tselina-D satellite during fueling at Site 43 of the Plesetsk Cosmodrome in Mirny at 19:01 local time on 18 March 1980, two hours and fifteen minutes before the intended launch time. 44 people were four more soon died in the hospital from burns. On 17 March the rocket was installed at the launch site. Various preliminary tests conducted; the launch of the rocket was scheduled to take place at 21:16 on 18 March. Several hours before the intended launch, the tanks were filled with kerosene at 19:00 and preceded by the addition of liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen to side tanks. After the addition of hydrogen peroxide was completed, a huge explosion at the site was witnessed at 19:01 MSK. Many of the survivors suffered severe lung damage. Over 80% of surviving eyewitnesses to the disaster reported that the first explosion originated from Block E of the rocket and was followed by multiple secondary explosions.

The 300 tons of fuel destroyed surrounding area. The official investigation responsible for determining the cause of the disaster headed by Leonid Smirnov assigned blame to the crew, killed at the site of the fire by stating the official cause as "explosion of material soaked in liquid oxygen as a result of unauthorized actions of one of the members of the ground crew". However, less than a year on 23 July 1981 after a second disaster of the same cause was narrowly avoided, it was discovered that a design flaw in the fuel filters of the rocket were the cause of the 1980 disaster, although it was impossible to confirm which type of filters were used in the rocket that exploded; the catalytically active lead solder on the filters would cause an explosion upon contact with hydrogen peroxide. The disaster was not reported in Soviet media at the time and only reached western media outlets in 1989 upon declassification. Pravda reported that the launch of the rocket was a success and did not say anything about the explosion