The impending sale of Springer Science & Business Media, announced last fall, has been delayed indefinitely by Swedish private equity group EQT Partners, Bloomberg reports, after potential buyers “balked at the asking price” of between 3 billion and 4 billion euros. (EQT enlisted JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs to solicit potential buyers.) When EQT bought Springer in tandem with the Government of Singapore in 2009, the company was valued at 2.3 billion euros. An auction scheduled for this month has been postponed, as have IPO preparations. Oxford University Press has acquired vocational teaching resource publisher Nelson Thornes from Infinitas Learning […]
Finance
Pearson Falls On Modest Profit Warning
In a trading update ahead of their full late-February earnings report, Pearson said to expect profits slightly short of what analysts had been expecting. Forecast operating profit of approximately £935 million and adjusted earnings of approximately 84 pence per share is only nine-tenths of a pence below expectations–but Pearson generally outperforms those expectations, and the stock has fallen in London on the news, down 4.5 percent over the past two days of trading. The release itself is disarmingly pleasant and polite. Penguin “benefited from a good fourth-quarter publishing performance and traded in line with our expectations,” and “will report revenues in […]
DBW: “Clock Is Ticking” On Industry Consolidation
The morning sessions at Digital Book World closed with a conversation between Providence Equity Partners senior advisor (and former Macmillan president) Brian Napack and Michael Cader of Publishers Lunch, speaking about how private equity views the publishing business, opportunities for scale, and what recent transactions–the pending Penguin Random House merger, other recent news involving McGraw-Hill and HarperCollins, and Barnes & Noble’s investments–may mean down the line. Napack, answering a question about what will be of value, generally believes that private equity opportunities in traditional media “stem from confusion in marketplace.” With respect to the publishing industry, the recent moves are […]
People, Etc.
Doris Cooper has been promoted to vp, associate publisher at Clarkson Potter, continuing to report to Pam Krauss. At Blue Rider Press, Sarah Hochman has been promoted to executive editor. Fast-growing digital publisher Entangled has signed a first-look film deal with John Davis’s Davis Entertainment, which produces for 20th Century Fox. Entangled owner and publisher Liz Pelletier will oversee the relationship for the Entangled, and was represented by The Gersh Agency. Cleveland Plain Dealer book editor Karen Long is leaving her position to to manage the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Arts reporter Joanna Connors will take over as book editor. Author and editor […]
Briefs: Safari Online Acquires Pub Factory; Foyles Holiday Sales Drop
Safari Books Online acquired PubFactory, which builds systems for delivering books, videos, reference, and other content on the web, from RDW Group’s iFactory division for an undisclosed sum. The deal closed on Decmeber 31, 2012. Under the agreement, Safari Books Online now owns the proprietary software developed by iFactory, which is used to develop scalable and semantically rich electronic libraries for publishers. “For some time now, we’ve admired the PubFactory team’s expertise in building powerful web-based systems for delivering mixed content like books, videos, journals, and reference databases. Their platform will be a robust complement to our growing stable of […]
Bresnick To Take Over for Weil; Blackstone Sold to AudioGO
Paul Bresnick of the Paul Bresnick Agency has a deal in principle to assume control of the Wendy Weil Agency on behalf of the late agent’s estate, he wrote to clients, “to ensure that Wendy’s clients will continue to be represented with the highest professional standards for which the agency has earned its sterling reputation.” Bresnick has started informing authors while the details are finalized “so that there will be no break in the service you’ve come to expect from the agency and your best interests will continue to be protected,” he wrote in a letter shown to us. He […]