Ottakar’s Accepts Low Bid Having rejected a bid thought to be around 285p a share a couple of weeks ago (when its stock was trading at about 330p), the desparate board of Ottakar’s has now accepted a bid of precisely 285p from HMV. Since rejecting the first bid, Ottakar’s stock had plunged, spurred by another […]
Archives for May 2006
Lunch for Tuesday, May 31
Price of Business in the UK The high price of coop fees for prime display during the holiday selling season in the UK has sparked a wave of articles in London’s Times (which claims to have first “exposed” coop payments five years ago). The paper says that WH Smith is charging about $94,000 a week […]
Lunch Weekly for Monday, May 29
Tuesday, May 30 Our Usual Reminder If for some reason this has reached you even though you are not a paying member of PublishersMarketplace, please visit the link below to join us all the time for complete deal reports and more. Click to register http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/register.shtml Deal Reports Just e-mail to deals@PublishersMarketplace if you aren’t using […]
Lunch for Friday, May 26
Solid Attendance at BEA Show organizers report that 31,971 people registered for the convention, while 22,366 verified attendees were counted. (The verified number represents people whose badges were scanned at the badge-holder pick-up counter and upon entering the show floors. The actual number of participants is somewhere in between the two figures.) This year’s numbers […]
Lunch for Thursday, May 25
Bertelsmann Confirms Buyback Bertelsmann will pay approximately $5.8 billion to buy back the 25 percent stake in the company held by GBL, preventing a public offering of the shares. In a letter to employees signed by Gunther Thielen and Liz Mohn, they declare that “the price is reasonable, taking into account the strong current trading […]
Lunch for Wednesday, May 24
Sales Nudge Up at Borders, But Profits Suffer Poor Borders. They actually outperformed their peers in their fiscal first quarter by showing a small comparable-store sales gain at their domestic superstores of 0.7% (compared, albeit, to a weak quarter a year ago). But losses were higher than anticipated, at 29 cents a share, due to […]