A day after rumors swirled that Liberty Media had stepped back from buying a 70 percent stake in Barnes & Noble, the bookseller announced Thursday afternoon that Liberty had invested an aggregate of $204 million, through the purchase of newly issued convertible preferred stock, which can be converted into 12 million shares of common stock. The purchase was for the same $17 a share as the original buyout offer – now abandoned – and Liberty will receive a quarterly dividend at an annual rate of 7.75 percent. Under the deal, which closes today, and subject to the waiting period under anti-trust […]
Vlahos Joins BISG As Executive Director on September 12
Len Vlahos will join the Book Industry Study Group as executive director, taking the position vacated earlier this year by Scott Lubeck. Vlahos has been coo of the American Booksellers Association since 2009, and has spent nearly 20 years with the organization. His last day with ABA is September 2, and he joins BSG on September 12. “All of us at ABA extend warmest congratulations to Len on his appointment as BISG’s new executive director,” said ABA CEO Oren Teicher in a statement. “To say the least, we will miss him a great deal, but we are delighted that the […]
Bookselling: Ann Patchett’s Nashville Store Signs Lease; Ivy Bookshop For Sale; And More
Parnassus Books, the Nashville bookstore co-owned by author Ann Patchett and Random House sales rep Karen Hayes, will be located in the city’s Greenbriar Village neighborhood, the same area where Davis-Kidd was located before it closed at the beginning of 2011. The 2,500-square foot store will open in October. “The location was great. I would rather thrive in a small space than shiver in a big space,” Patchett told the Tennessean. “David Crabtree (executive vice president of Brookside Properties, which owns the space) is so spectacular. Some people said we don’t want a bookstore. Bookstores are dead, but he got […]
McGraw-Hill Exploring Separation of Education Business
For years investors have disapproved of McGraw-Hill’s portfolio, which folds the S&P Credit Ratings Agency, Education, and other unrelated businesses under the same umbrella. Recent share pickups by activist hedge fund Jana Partners in tandem with the Ontario Teachers Pension Fund heightened calls for the company to break up, sell, or spin off some of its divisions – especially the education side, the largest group within the company. The WSJ first reported, with other outlets following with their own unnamed sources or “people briefed on the matter” that McGraw-Hill retained investment bank Evercore Partners to advise the company on a […]
Legal News: Another Appeals Case Rules First Sale Doctrine Is US-Only; ‘The Shack’ Lawsuit Finally Settled
Just a few weeks after the Ninth Circuit ruled in a case featuring Costco’s sale of imported Omega watches that the first sale doctrine does not apply to imported goods, another ruling this week from the Second Circuit more forcefully confirms this conclusion – and this time it involves book sales. In a 2-1 decision, the court said Supap Kirtsaeng violated Wiley’s copyrights when he sold cheap foreign editions of the publishers’ textbooks in the US because first sale doctrine does not apply to books sold outside of the country. Any other conclusion would undercut a law already on the books […]
Liberty Media Now Favors Other Options Instead of Outright BN Buy
In the more than three months since Liberty Media stated its intention to buy a 70 percent stake in Barnes & Noble at 17 cents a share, further reports suggested that prospect had dimmed, or at least put on hold. Then on Wednesday morning a report by dealReporter – which has a hit-or-miss track record on such things – intimated that “constraints on financing had quieted deal talk” and that Liberty was leaning towards “a preferred share investment.” Per “two sources familiar with the situation and an industry banker following the situation,” the original deal wasn’t off the table, but […]