At Simon & Schuster Children’s Alexandra Penfold has been promoted to editor, and Julia Maguire, Navah Wolfe and Lydia Frost have all moved up to assistant editor, while Kimberly Boyer is now assistant editor of Little Simon and Jessica Echeverria is assistant editor at Simon Spotlight. In other promotions, Catharine Sotzing is now associate marketing manager, education & library; Michael McCartney and Nick Sciacca both moved up to senior designer; and Cara Petrus was promoted to associate art director. Naomi Benaron‘s RUNNING THE RIFT won $25,000 Bellwether Prize for Fiction, “the largest monetary prize for unpublished fiction in North America,” […]
Finance
Random House Discloses Sale of Japanese and Korean Units
Random House revealed quietly in an internal personnel announcement that over the past 10 months the company has retrenched from two pieces of the Peter Olson expansionist years. In September, they discontinued their Japanese joint venture, Random House Kodansha, which began in 2003, and in February they divested their Random House Korea, which they had started as a joint venture with JoongAng and bought full control of four years ago. In both cases, the units were sold to the CEOs and executives who run the companies. Random House Kodansha ceo Yuji Takeda led the buyout of what is now called […]
Education Gains Slightly at McGraw-Hill; United Media Licensing Sold
Reporting results for their fiscal first quarter, McGraw-Hill’s education division rose 1.5 percent to $317 million, with a reduced operating loss of $61.8 million. Higher ed, professional and international sales rose over 8 percent to $206 million due to “surging sales of digital products,” but school education sales fell 9 percent to $112 million. Those digital gains included “double-digit revenue increases” from “e-books, online courses and online homework management assessment products for students.”Release Brand management group Iconix has bought United Media Licensings from the E.W. Scripps Company for $175 million. As part of the deal, Iconiz has created a partnership […]
People, Etc.
Nigel Roby, managing director of UK trade magazine The Bookseller, has reached an agreement “in principle” to buy the property from Nielsen. The magazine says that “negotiations are expected to conclude at the end of April. All the editorial, sales and marketing and events teams will remain in place.” At Wiley, Steve Miron is being promoted to svp of the STMS (scientific, technical, medical, and scholarly) division, effective May 1. He has been chief operating officer there since the announcement last October that Eric Swanson will retire in October 2010. Until that time, Swanson will serve as svp, government relations […]
Market News: Wiley Insiders Sell, and BN Speculation
Wiley ceo William Pesce , cfo/coo Ellis Cousens and seven other company “insiders” have been selling options and shares now that the publisher’s stock is on a roll. They’ve sold about $14 million worth of shares in all over the past five months, “more shares than in any comparable period in the last twenty years, according to data from The Washington Service,” the WSJ reports. Pesce exercised options and sold shares for about $5.5 million in proceeds, while Cousens collected about $2.5 million in proceeds. Spokesperson Susan Spilka told the WSJ that “the company does not undertake to explain the […]
Borders May Try to Raise New Equity, While Paying Steep Interest On New Loan
Borders filed details on their new credit agreements with the SEC along with filing their formal quarterly report. They disclose that the new $90 million term loan carries a minimum interest rate of 14.75 percent. Additionally, Borders needs to raise at least $25 million from the sale of new stock shares by May 15, or else there will be a $10 million reserve against the borrowing base of that term loan. (Even with yesterday’s sharp rise in the stock, Borders still has a current total market cap of about $150 million.) Good old Pershing Square is protected in the case […]