The antitrust trial began Tuesday morning with testimony from another ceo–Brian Murray from HarperCollins. He said that News Corp.’s bid for Simon & Schuster “was not close” to Bertelsmann’s offer and that he was “shocked” that they were willing to pay $2.175 billion. “We’ve probably done five or so acquisitions and tend be very disciplined in our financial modeling, so we could not find a way to have a return at that price.” (We’ll say it one more time: PL has previously reported that people familiar with the same said the underbidder was Vivendi, not HarperCollins.) In his direct examination, […]
