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 speaking about sales of physical books only. S&S reports that for print books and ebooks combined, their titles are available in over 200 countries. PRH has its own “dedicated sales reps across the globe,” whereas S&S uses wholesalers and distributors in some international markets. Additionally, […]
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, asking whether they are for or against the merger with most respondents replying “strongly against.” A release notes that “nearly nine out of ten” of the people who responded oppose it. The survey was conducted from August 11 to August 16, as the government’s antitrust trial against PRH stretched into its third week. The AALA could not provide a number of people who responded, as they said more surveys continue […]
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 evidence inadmissible: “The efficiencies projected by Penguin Random House are not substantiated and verified. Although many may be verifiable, some are not.” (We’ll share the full ruling tomorrow; it was quite extensive and thorough, and grounded in both the horizontal merger guidelines and case law […]
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 […]
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 reading). To follow the arguments from the start, here are the notable takeaways so far, day by day, along with links to the full pieces. (NB, we have reserved our extensive coverage for PublishersMarketplace.com members. For the trial-obsessed among readers of our shorter, free Publishers […]
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, identified as based on “relationships that we had with certain human beings at one of the private equity firms and their background in the publishing business.” (This means, presumably, Richard Sarnoff at KKR). And “there was a very small strategic buyer that had a financial […]