A group of Barnes & Noble shareholders, led by the Louisiana Municipal Police Employees Retirement System, has filed suit in a Delaware Chancery court to block the retailer’s proposed purchase of privately-owned Barnes & Noble College. The plaintiffs allege breach of fiduciary duty by the company and its directors. Shareholders are concerned that the deal lacks transparency in not providing more historical financial data on the College retailer; pays Len Riggio more than another buyer would; reduces BN”s working capital; and represents an investment in a segment that is in “permanent decline.”Courthouse News Separately, in a complex posting about the […]
Houghton Parent Avoids Bankruptcy Risk By Refinancing $1 Billion–At Big Cost to Equity Holders
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s corporate parent Education Media & Publishing Group has successfully refinanced more than $1 billion of their big debt load of $7.6 billion–but current shareholders face a dilution of about 45 percent as that debt is converted to equity. The financier who built this mountain of debt Barry O’Callaghan will see his own stake of 40 percent cut nearly in half and will lose his voting control. The company will save about $100 million in interest.FT The FT also reports today that HMH will forgo renewed attempts to sell its consumer book arm in the hopes of bolstering […]
Wall Street Sours on BN's Purchase of Barnes & Noble College
On Friday sentiment among traders continued to turn against Barnes & Noble’s intended purchase of Barnes & Noble College from Len Riggio with the retailer’s stock down more than 9 percent for the day. First the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column voiced a number of concerns, including limited disclosure about what kind of results the public company is purchasing: “As for earnings, B&N has provided only numbers for the year to May with no history or projections. Shareholders deserve to know whether the college chain’s earnings are declining. B&N says it will disclose more when the deal […]
New WMA Letter Claims Publishers Won't Sell Through Google Settlement; Publishers Say Otherwise
William Morris Endeavor reiterated their advice to clients to opt out of the Google Book Settlement in a second letter sent last week after the Authors Guild responded aggressively to the agency’s correspondence and asserted it contained “several errors.” In the new letter from WME, said to be posted in its entirety, the agency underscored that “we believe that our clients benefit from their stature, the negotiating power of the Agency, as well as long established precedent in our book contracts that other authors may not share.” In other words, they want to make their own deals, and not be […]
Judge Clears Hachette But Will Let Suit Against Rita Cosby's Book Go to Jury
Judge Denny Chin (co-star of the Google Books Settlement case) ruled that lawyer Howard K. Stern’s $60 million suit against Rita Cosby for her book about the death of Anna Nicole Smith, BLONDE AMBITION, can proceed to a jury trial. Chin wrote, “printing a claim that [Larry] Birkhead and Stern had sex would be a way to make it to the top of the bestseller list, and a reasonable jury could find that Cosby ignored the inherently improbable nature of the statement in her zeal to write a blockbuster book.” The judge also found that some statements “are so inherently […]
Dan Brown Will Have A Simultaneous eBook
Suzanne Herz at Knopf Doubleday said this morning, “Now that all of our security and logistical issues surrounding the e-book of THE LOST SYMBOL have been resolved, the e-book will be released simultaneously with the hardcover on September 15th. We will not be issuing any further comment on this.”