Rockefeller Center developer Tishman Speyer announced that McNally Jackson will open a 7,000-square-foot bookstore at 1 Rockefeller Plaza, expect to open in winter 2022.
Four Hundred Fifty More Additional Minutes, How Do You Measure the Economics of Harm?
In auctions? In best bids? In GUPPIs whatever they are? In options? In Second Score? Better-best, too? How about books? Seasons of books…. OK, so we’re a little punchy: Thursday in court was filled with more fine-grain redirect of the two economics experts, as both sides revisited ground already covered. Defense expert Dr. Snyder’s asserted 23 percent of instances in which non-big-five publishers were winners (9 percent) or runners-up came up again and again — in part because of Dr. Snyder’s own confusion and overestimation on Wednesday about how many deals that comprised. It should have simply been in the […]
The Beginning of The End of The Beginning
Just three short but endless weeks after it started, the DOJ’s antitrust trial seeking to block Penguin Random House’s acquisition of Simon & Schuster ends Friday with closing arguments. (We’ll run as much as we can in today’s edition of Publishers Lunch; if there is more after our deadline we’ll post further over the weekend. Either way, we’ll share the full text when we can, as we have been doing throughout the trial.) Without pre-judging the outcome — since, as we have shown, Judge Florence Pan has been very much in charge of this trial from start to finish — […]
Defense Expert Snyder Is Challenged On His Math, and More
After the fireworks of the morning opening on Wednesday, when Judge Florence Pan thoroughly disallowed Penguin Random House’s models of the extra money they say they will make after the merger — and share with authors — as being “unverified and unverifiable” the rest of day was a far more plodding parsing of the defense economics expert, Dr. Edward Snyder. His cross-examination continued Thursday morning, also included in this post. The DOJ will bring back their expert Dr. Nicholas Hill for rebuttal, and then the testimony will be complete. Closing arguments will be presented Friday, on schedule. Once again, Judge […]
The Efficiencies Papers
Further to our report from Wednesday morning on Judge Pan’s rejection of PRH introducing evidence of their projected efficiencies and synergies after the merger, we can now present you with full documentation. The preceding discussion is remarkable on its own, as you can view the judge’s frustration with the defense attorney. Then her actual ruling, which was quite detailed and designed to withstand scrutiny, since it’s likely to be an element of an appeal if it comes to that, is also worth reading and presented here (comprising 24 pages of transcript). Efficiencies discussion Efficiencies ruling
Judge Pan Challenges the Defense’s Economics Expert, Asserts Her Current View of Diminished Competition
The antitrust trial took a pretty striking turn on Monday afternoon for anyone trying to gauge where the case actually stands as it enters its third and likely final week. The defense was questioning their economic expert, Yale professor Dr. Edward Snyder, who was duly explaining why he believes the government’s expert Dr. Nicholas Hill got almost everything wrong: “The government has not proven that there will be a substantial lessening of competition as a result of the merger.” That will likely be the question on which the case hinges. Yes, the merger will give the combined firm half of the […]