While reporting earnings on Thursday, Vivendi disclosed that it is prepared to spin off the Editis publishing group into its own separate, publicly-traded company in order to win approval from EU and French regulators to acquire Lagardere as a whole. The company said, “To avoid any potential antitrust problems due to its combination with Lagardère Group, Vivendi will study the proposed divestment of 100% of its subsidiary Editis mainly through a distribution and stock market listing.” But quotes from company executives make it clear they are well past a study. “We knew that there would be some (competition) hurdles,” Vivendi’s […]
In Case…
Two modest open calls: 1. We’re looking at new experiment that involves AI/machine audio narration. If you have any experience or recommendations here, please let us know! 2. If anyone wants to suggests a neutral Washington, DC watering hole for people to find each other after court hours next week, we’re open to suggestions.
Slightly Unredacted
The parties in the A3 trial have been revising and resubmitting some of their key documents to more lightly redact data and citations. We already swapped in Penguin Random House’s newer version of their pre-trial brief on Monday, and now that post also includes a posted PDF of the Department of Justice’s revised brief as well (submitted to the court yesterday). Among the details now visible: When bidding for Simon & Schuster, Bertelsmann ceo Thomas Rabe expressed that the company faced “a disadvantage in the auction due to antitrust risks, which are likely to be greater in our case than […]
Expanding Deals
As some of you may have noticed, we are finishing up another expansion and revision of Deals/Dealmakers categories, this time with an emphasis on our sprawling nonfiction section. Long overdue (someone finally asked), we have created a Body, Mind & Spirit category, so those projects will no longer be scattered among multiple ill-fitting tags. We have also split the rather unwieldy History/Politics/Current Affairs into two separate groups: History, on its own, and Politics/Current Affairs (which still holds a wide spectrum of topics, including climate, race, feminism, gender, legal & justice, urban studies, education and more, often broadly related to social […]
A3: DOJ and PRH State Their Cases In Pre-Trial Filings
On Friday, the Department of Justice and Penguin Random House both filed their formal pre-trial briefs with the court for the upcoming A3 antitrust trial, framing in advance their core arguments and counterpoints. As in their original complaint, the DOJ focuses on their core argument that the acquisition of Simon & Schuster “would further entrench the largest publishing giant in the United States (and the world) and give the merged company control of nearly half of the market to acquire anticipated top-selling books [ATSB] from authors.” They allege that the “merger would likely result in authors of anticipated top-selling books […]
A3: More On Walsh, Printing Issues
In other filings from the court docket over the weekend, the DOJ further illuminated their position on two issues that Judge Florence Pan is expected to rule on Monday (there is a pre-trial conference that started at 10 AM): Whether Jennifer Rudolph Walsh will be deemed an expert witness, and the question of admitting information about Bertelsmann’s position of strength in the US book printing market. Regarding Walsh, the government says she is no more of an “expert” than most of the industry witnesses, and should not be differentiated that way or allowed to opine beyond her own experiences as […]