Following PRH executive Manuel Sansigre’s testimony, an S&S spokesperson has clarified and corrected a couple of points. When Sansigre told the court, “We learned from the management presentation of Simon & Schuster that they have presence in 100 countries” and added that “in our case, we have presence in more than 200 countries,” he was […]
Antitrust Trial
Survey: AALA Members Are “Strongly Against” PRH Merger
Over the course of the last five days, the Association of American Literary Agents conducted a survey of its members about Penguin Random House’s plans to acquire Simon & Schuster, with most respondents coming out as “strongly against” the merger. A release notes that “nearly nine out of ten” of the people who responded oppose […]
Judge Rules PRH’s Efficiencies Estimates Are Inadmissible, After Sansigre Details Expected Staff Overlap, Royalty Raises
As we reported before the trial began, Judge Florence Pan had clearly been “a little skeptical” about admitting Penguin Random House’s internal expectations of significant cost savings and sales increases following the merger. On Wednesday morning, after another testy exchange with PRH’s attorney Andrew Frackman, Judge Pan ruled for the government and found the efficiencies […]
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 […]
Antitrust Trial Day by Day
To continue the extensive baseball metaphors, the DOJ v. PRH antitrust trial enters its home stretch this week, with parties scheduled to deliver closing arguments on Friday. We’ve written well over 20,000 words about the trial since the proceedings started (and that does not count any of the court transcripts we have attached for further […]
Berkett Details the S&S Bidders
Most of ViacomCBS executive Alex Berkett’s testimony on Monday morning was in closed session. But he confirmed for the record that the final three bidders for Simon & Schuster were PRH, Vivendi and HarperCollins. The other invited bidders in the first round were “another strategic buyer” (e.g. a company in publishing), and a financial buyer, […]