Most of ViacomCBS executive Alex Berkett’s testimony on Monday morning was in closed session. But he confirmed for the record that the final three bidders for Simon & Schuster were PRH, Vivendi and HarperCollins. The other invited bidders in the first round were “another strategic buyer” (e.g. a company in publishing), and a financial buyer, identified as based on “relationships that we had with certain human beings at one of the private equity firms and their background in the publishing business.” (This means, presumably, Richard Sarnoff at KKR). And “there was a very small strategic buyer that had a financial […]
