As we reported before the trial began, Judge Florence Pan had clearly been “a little skeptical” about admitting Penguin Random House’s internal expectations of significant cost savings and sales increases following the merger. On Wednesday morning, after another testy exchange with PRH’s attorney Andrew Frackman, Judge Pan ruled for the government and found the efficiencies evidence inadmissible: “The efficiencies projected by Penguin Random House are not substantiated and verified. Although many may be verifiable, some are not.” (We’ll share the full ruling tomorrow; it was quite extensive and thorough, and grounded in both the horizontal merger guidelines and case law […]
