M&A

The announcement of Penguin Random House’s agreement to acquire Simon & Schuster was met quickly with a number of statements and articles in opposition. The Authors Guild (it’s “creating a huge imbalance in the US publishing industry”) and the American Booksellers Association (it “will mean too much power over authors and readers in the hands of a single corporation”) will both ask the Department of Justice to block the deal. The Association of Canadian Publishers is asking both the Competition Bureau and the Department of Canadian Heritage to review the deal. They say the merger would “have a direct and […]

“Three people familiar with the process” have confirmed to the NYT that parents of the two largest trade publishers in the US — Penguin Random House and HarperCollins — are the two leading bidders for Simon & Schuster at this point. Which is exactly as was expected, since the company will yield greater financial efficiencies if it is acquired by another, larger trade publisher. “At least one of the offers has topped $1.7 billion,” two of the people said to the paper, with final bids due prior to Thanksgiving. If true, that would be a substantial premium over prices for […]

Berryville Graphics, a division of Bertelsmann Printing, has acquired the two book manufacturing plants that Quad has been trying to sell for a year now. Berryville has bought the facilities in Fairfield, PA (370,000 square feet) and Martinsburg, WV (380,000 square feet, which focuses on paperbacks). The transaction closed on October 31. It’s a significant expansion for Berryville, which Dun & Bradstreet estimated had sales of about $120 million in 2019. The money-losing Quad book printing business — acquired from World Color, previously known as Quebecor — had annual sales of about $200 million. They sold their big, 1 million-square-foot […]