Michael Cader

Pension Liabilities Could Sink Permira Bid for Smith Former WH Smith chairman Martin Taylor, who oversees the company’s underfunded pension fund now, is insisting that equity firm Permira would need to replenish the fund immediately if their takeover bid goes through-which could stop the deal altogether. A London newspaper reports, “Those overseeing pension funds have a duty to ensure that nothing happens that threatens the security of the fund. If a company is taken over by a group carrying high debts, the trustees are within their rights to insist that any shortfall in the fund is made up straight away. […]

As promised/warned, a later-day Lunch for a quieter Friday. More New Jobs With another batch of brand-new job opportunities since yesterday, the Lunch Job Board continues to offer fresh possibilities every day. More than that, though, we bring employers the single-largest audience of book publishing people available online — by a margin of many thousands — and we do it at what is by far the lowest price. If you haven’t tried our Job Board since we relocated it to PublishersMarketplace earlier in the year, you’ll be surprised at how efficient and effective it is at reaching people within the […]

Schedule Note I’m not sure why, but our school has released my beloved children way too early in June. Thus I shall be replenishing post-BEA and filling the school/camp gap with a few days of family fun. Some Lunch will be served tomorrow, but not until late in the day. A hearty deal round-up will be provided on the usual schedule. Beyond that, at various points Monday through Wednesday you may or may not hear from me. Deal reports, job postings, and all our other site features-including headlines and links posted to the PM.com home page, will continue with vigor […]

Orange (Sur)Prize As if often the case, the U.K.’s Orange Prize honoring fiction by a woman written in English confounded expectations, naming Andrea Levy’s SMALL ISLAND as the winner of the $55,000 award. She beat out favorites “Oryx and Crake” by Margaret Atwood and “The Colour” by Rose Tremain, as well as others including National Book Award winner “The Great Fire” by Shirley Hazzard and the praised debut novel “Purple Hibiscus” by young Nigerian author Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. Levy was surprised too; she told the BBC, “I was shocked – I didn’t think this would happen. It was a fantastic […]

Releases on Reagan Releases Press releases about Reagan related books (mostly reprints) are coming at a fast pace. In the accelerated publishing schedule column, Sentinel has moved up REAGAN OFF THE CUFF: Personal Recollections of The President, to july 26. Written by longtime Reagan aide Jim Kuhn, whose positions included serving as executive assistant to Mr. Reagan during his second term, it’s described by the publisher as, “A fly-on-the-wall memoir.” Bought last year, it was originally set for publication in 2005. DK has announced a new run of their glossy $50 testimonial first published in 2001, “Ronald Reagan: An American […]

A Small Note I’m back, but still exhausted, and on top of the last few days’ reports there is so much new information to share. Which is my lame excuse for presenting a lengthy, and no-doubt typo-filled, meal. (If this is getting too Deluxe to handle, you should tell me.) BEA In a Few Final Blinks Just as he’s expected to dominate the bestseller list this summer, the man from Hope, Arkansas set a buoyant mood of hope that prevailed throughout the Book Expo America convention in Chicago, which wrapped up yesterday. To add one more tidbit to our prior […]