Bertelsmann’s recent international managers’ meeting focused on plans to invest from €5 billion to €7 billion euros across the company by 2025 — but as the FT underscores, right now the company’s ambition to acquire is facing multiple obstacles. Besides the Simon & Schuster acquisition, now in doubt pending the verdict of Judge Florence Pan, a plan to merge their French television business M6 with the larger TF1 was dropped in September after a hearing before the country’s competition authority, which had “significant problems.” The same month, customer services provider Marjorel — half owned by Bertlesmann — and call center […]
Antitrust Trial
You Also Get…
It takes at least a few posts to explain just how much material we have packed into our new ebook THE TRIAL. Yes, it has the full opening and closing arguments; the full public testimony of 22 witnesses; Judge Pan’s critical (and lengthy) ruling disallowing Penguin Random House’s evidence about their projected post-merger cost savings and increased revenues; and key pre- and post-trial documents. And yes, at every step of the way it includes the Publishers Lunch overviews and analysis. But that’s not all, of course. At the end, we have culled a selection of over 100 pages of the […]
Publishing Today: The Comprehensive Account of THE TRIAL
While publishers large and small are planning to issue versions of the still-unwritten January 6th report, only Publishers Lunch is bold enough (or crazy enough) to bring to market a nearly complete record of THE TRIAL: The DOJ’s Suit to Block Penguin Random House’s Acquisition of Simon & Schuster. It may not be the “big book” of the fall season, but it’s certainly a strong candidate for the biggest book. (Or ebook, since we’re still figuring out the mechanics of doing something so long through print-on-demand.) This digital doorstop, at nearly 700,000 words, brings together the significant day-by-day antitrust trial […]
Judge Florence Pan Elevated to Higher Court
As expected, the Senate confirmed the elevation of Judge Florence Pan — who is currently deciding the PRH-SS antitrust trial — to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. It has not yet been announced when Judge Pan will assume her new role, or what effect the news will have on the timing of her antitrust trial ruling. The DC appeals court is considered the second most important court in the country because of its decisions on government cases, and this marks the second time she has taken a seat vacated by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown […]
DOJ’s Post-Trial Briefs Restate Their Case
In a confident and assured filing of “findings of fact and conclusions of law,” the Department of Justice restated for the final time their case to block Penguin Random House’s acquisition of Simon & Schuster. “The proposed acquisition is precisely the march toward concentration and monopsony power that Congress enacted the Clayton Act to prevent. One entity’s control of almost half of the nation’s anticipated top-selling books threatens competition in multiple ways. Authors’ advances would fall—advances that they use to pay their bills and that reflect compensation for their work. The contractual terms publishers offer authors would worsen. Authors would […]
PRH Releases Post-Trial Briefs
The antitrust trial is only just now officially over. On Wednesday the parties filed their final objections to each other’s “proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law” (which were submitted last week), and by the end of day today redacted versions of all of those extensive documents become public. Only PRH’s redacted public filings were available as of press time; we will provide a full analysis of all of the filings when the DOJ’s are available. The findings of fact lay out in numbered sequence each party’s interpretation of the key evidence presented at trial. As we have suggested […]