Citing “people familiar with the situation,” the WSJ reported late last week that Apax Partners (which owns a majority stake in Cengage) and Apollo Global Management are “leading contenders” to buy McGraw-Hill Education, both having done “serious due diligence” on the division. Bids on the ongoing auction were due last Thursday though “after McGraw-Hill decides on a preferred bidder, the two sides will have to reach agreement.” That’s all a polite way of confirming that there are only two bidders still interested in the unit, and the offering prices are likely still below what McGraw-Hill said they were looking for. The […]
Archives for October 2012
Random House and Penguin Make Merger Plan Official
After last week’s official confirmation of talks and a newsmaking weekend overture from News Corp., Bertelsmann and Pearson made their intended partnership official in an early Monday morning announcement that they have agreed to combine their trade book businesses into a single entity known as Penguin Random House. Under the deal, which is “expected to complete in the second half of 2013” but could take some time while awaiting regulatory clearances in multiple territories, Bertelsmann will hold 53 percent of the new company and Pearson will take a 47 percent stake, agreeing to hold those stakes for a minimum of […]
News Corp. Said to Ready “Substantial Cash Offer” to Buy Penguin Outright
On Sunday, two different News Corp. newspapers both come up with unidentified sources for the same story. First the Sunday Times of London wrote that “News Corp. has joined the race for Penguin with a last-minute overture to the directors of Pearson, the media conglomerate that owns the book publisher. Glen Moreno, Pearson’s chairman, will put the approach to directors in the next few days. Rupert Murdoch…is understood to have indicated he will make a substantial cash offer — thought to be about £1 billion [or about 1 times annual sales] — for Penguin, subject to due diligence.” (Actually they […]
Judge Throws Out Lawsuit Alleging McGraw-Hill Deprived Photographer of Foreign Royalties
Earlier this week a federal court judge threw out a lawsuit against McGraw-Hill seeking class-action status in which photographer Bob Cordell claimed the publisher had deprived him of foreign royalties for his manuscript “Designing Audio Power Amplifiers.” The case should be of interest for those following suit against Harlequin over ebook royalties that we covered earlier this week. In the complaint, Cordell alleged that McGraw-Hill “systematically violates its contracts with its authors by failing to remit royalties based upon the amounts received from third parties for sales of works outside of the United States, when these third parties are the […]
Briefs: Jacques Barzun Dies; Strand Central Park Stalls Up For Grabs; And More
Cultural critic, historian, and essayist Jacques Barzun, 104, died Thursday evening in San Antonio. Barzun was a longtime professor at Columbia University and the author of dozens of books, including TEACHER OF AMERICA (1945), THE HOUSE OF INTELLECT (1959), THE DELIGHTS OF DETECTION (1961), and most recently, FROM DAWN TILL DECADENCE (2000). NYT Obit In a separate bit of news from Pearson, evp for Content Management, North America Dan Lee will become ceo of Pearson Canada on December 31, when current CEO Allan Reynolds retires. The Central Park stalls currently operated by The Strand Bookstore on Fifth Avenue and East […]
Apple Sells 14 Million iPads In the Quarter
Apple also announced quarterly earnings after the close of the market on Thursday, registering sales of $36 billion and net profit of $8.2 billion. (Sales were slightly ahead of expectations; earnings were slightly below the predictions.) For the full year, the company had sales of $156.5 billion and net income of almost $42 billion. For the next quarter, they expect sales of “about $52 billion,” but lower profits than the same time a year ago. As indicated earlier in the week, they sold 14 million iPads during the quarter, for a total of 101 million sold to date. On a […]