[2] By the time of World War II, the company had major national and international subsidiaries in manufacturing, electricity, oil, coal, banking and financial services, publishing (periodicals and books), and aviation.

In 1844 Samuel Pearson became an associate partner in a small brickmaking and contracting civil engineering company in Huddersfield, West Yorkshire.

[7] In 1880, control passed to Samuel's grandson Weetman Dickinson Pearson (later 1st Viscount Cowdray), an engineer, who in 1890 moved the business to London and turned it into one of the world's largest construction companies.

[14][7] Its final projects included construction of the Silent Valley Reservoir in Northern Ireland (contract awarded in 1923),[16] and completion of the Sennar Dam, in Sudan, in 1925.

[22][19] The conglomerate entered the electrification market in 1900, when Weetman Pearson was requested to electrify Mexico's tramway system, and then the general electrical supply in the city of Vera Cruz and elsewhere.

[7][26] Amerada was compulsorily acquired by the British government in 1941 due to World War II; a small interest was reacquired by Pearson in 1945.

[7] In 1919 Pearson also acquired a 45% stake in the London branch of merchant bankers Lazard Brothers,[27] an interest which was increased to 80% in 1932 during the depression years.

[7] In 1999, due to the company's refocus on education, publishing, and media, Pearson sold its Lazard holdings for £410 million.

[29][30] In 1921, Pearson purchased a number of local daily and weekly newspapers in the United Kingdom, which it combined to form the Westminster Press group.

[69] Pearson purchased a series of other testing and assessment businesses, including Knowledge Technologies in 2004,[70] AGS in 2005,[71] and Promissor in 2006.

[74] It sold Silver Burdett Ginn Religion, a Catholic publishing division it operated under the Scott Foresman imprint, to RCL Benziger in 2007.

[79] In 2010, Pearson acquired the adult English training service Wall Street Institute[80] and the school learning systems division of Sistema Educacional Brasileiro (SEB).

[81] Also in 2010, the company sold its 61% stake in Interactive Data to investment funds managed by Silver Lake Partners and Warburg Pincus.

[84][85] Also in 2011, Pearson acquired Connections Education and agreed to sell its 50% stake in FTSE International Limited to the London Stock Exchange for £450 million.

[87] In May 2012 Pearson announced its acquisition of GlobalEnglish Corporation, an American Business English software and solutions company, in an all-cash transaction.

[88] In October 2012 Pearson entered into talks with rival conglomerate Bertelsmann, over the possibility of combining their respective publishing companies, Penguin Group and Random House,[89] and said it would merge Penguin Books with Bertelsmann's Random House to create the world's biggest consumer book publisher.

[91][92] In May 2013, Pearson announced a new restructuring plan to invest in digital learning and emerging markets, after predicting weaker earnings.

[99] Following the sale of its financial news publications Financial Times and The Economist in 2015, Pearson plc rebranded in January 2016 to focus solely on education, and the corporation adopted a new logo,[100] the interrobang (‽), a combination of a question mark and an exclamation point, meant to convey a "combination of excitement, curiosity and individuality"[100] and "the excitement and fun of learning".

[101] In July 2017, Pearson sold its Tutor Vista and Edurite lines of business to India-based education technology company, Byju's.

[105] In 2019, Pearson sold its US K-12 courseware business to the private equity firm Nexus Capital Management,[106] which rebranded it as Savvas Learning Company.

[110] In December 2021, Pearson announced that Omid Kordestani had been appointed as the chairman of the board of directors,[111][112] effective March 2022.

[121] In 2017, more than six out of ten Pearson shareholders voted against the chief executive's pay package of £1.5 million after the company made a record loss.

[122] Pearson US has been criticised for using offshore tax avoidance schemes involving a host of companies at a service address in Luxembourg.

[68] Edexcel has also faced criticism over repeated leaks of exam material in consecutive years; police investigations into some of the incidents were referred to prosecutors.