The European Commission has approved the cashless merger between Holtzbrinck’s Macmillan Science and Education and Springer Science+Business Media, which was first announced back in January. After reviewing the joint venture proposal, the EC found that the two companies “overlap mainly in the market for the provision of academic publishing and, marginally, in the markets for scientific online databases and workflow tools, marketing and communication as well as publishing related services.” The Commission “concluded that the proposed acquisition would not raise competition concerns given the parties’ moderate combined market positions resulting from the proposed transaction and the presence of a number of strong players […]
Finance
No Joke — An Apparent Amazon Source Uses Business Insider to Pressure Harper Negotiations
Many online stories today need to be taken with a grain of a salt, but the Business Insider story about Amazon and HarperCollins posted Tuesday is apparently meant seriously. An unidentified source whose perspective makes them connected to Amazon tells BI (in which Jeff Bezos is an investor), “The contract between ‘Big Five’ book publisher HarperCollins and Amazon is about to expire, and HarperCollins is refusing to sign an agreement with the new terms that Amazon is asking.” The source also threatens on the bookseller’s behalf: “If HarperCollins and Amazon don’t come to an agreement, no print or digital HarperCollins […]
Scholastic Acquires Minority Stake in UK Publisher Make Believe Ideas
Scholastic announced Monday that it acquired a minority equity interest in UK-based education learning company Make Believe Ideas. The first co-branded books for children aged 0-5 will be unveiled at the Bologna Book Fair next week, with worldwide release scheduled for fall 2015. Financial terms were not disclosed. “Make Believe Ideas’ focus on early learning and creativity and its engaging product line extends our publishing program and fits seamlessly into our distribution channels at Scholastic,” said evp & president, trade publishing Ellie Berger in the announcement. “With a renewed focus on the importance of reading with babies beginning at birth, […]
Rakuten to Buy OverDrive for $410 Million
The two companies announced in press releases that Rakuten will pay “a total consideration of $410 million in cash” to buy OverDrive. They say OverDrive’s EBITDA was $25 million for 2014, which amounts to a very hefty multiple of earnings that Rakuten is paying — but the Japanese-based company says that with the purchase it “expects the EBITDA of its global eBook business will be close to breakeven in 2015.” The deal is scheduled to close in April. OverDrive’s majority shareholder is the private equity firm Insight Venture Partners, which acquired that stake after making an unspecified “major investment” in 2010. (The specific […]
Investor Talk: Harper Touts International Expansion, Eyes More Buys
We’re using the slow week to catch up on presentations made at a couple of media investor conferences earlier this month. HarperCollins CFO Bedi Singh appeared at a Morgan Stanley conference in early March, where he underscored the better than expected results already coming from last year’s Harlequin acquisition. “Harlequin is going quite well; the integration is going much better than we had planned,” Singh said. “The international platform has been a real asset when we have been negotiating book deals.” Singh indicated they have already extracted “over $20 million of synergies coming out of that deal,” even though “we didn’t […]
People, Etc.
Eerdmans has hired Lil Copan as senior acquisitions editor, general trade. She was at Abingdon Press most recently. A group of senior management and board members have joined in a management buyout of the Peter Lang Academic Publishing Group from the Peter Lang Children’s Trust. The deal is expected to close by mid-2015. The new management team comprises Claude Béglé as chairman of the board, Kelly Shergill as CEO and deputy chairman, Vanessa Weber as CFO and Abdurahman Kaymaz as head of warehouse and logistics. Stuart Wilkins, who led the process on behalf of the Trust, said in the announcement: “The Trust Board recognized that their […]