Once Hurricane Sandy stops being the foremost story no doubt trade publishing will return to speculation about the pending deal to create Penguin Random House. With government approval required in multiple territories (and particularly complex negotiations in places where Penguin faces litigation or investigation related to the adoption of the agency model), we thought it might be instructive to revisit the last major trade publishing merger. It was March 1998 when Bertelsmann announced their $1.4 billion deal to acquire Random House and merge it with their trade division, Bantam Doubleday Dell. News of that deal also came as a surprise […]