Finance

College bookstore operator Follett Higher Education (and parent corporate entity Follett Corporation) has been sold to a group of private investors led by Jefferson River Capital, a private investment firm that is the family office of Tony James, recently retired executive vice chairman of Blackstone. Terms of the deal were not announced. Just as reported last August, the entirety of Follett has now been sold, with Morgan Stanley as financial advisor. In September 2021, Follett School Solutions was sold to Francisco Partners. The company said they would close the Follett Book Fairs, which were recently sold to Literati instead. Then in November, […]

The drawn out battle to buy RR Donnelly appears to be over, as the company announced that the unidentified “strategic party” has withdrawn its higher bid of $11.50 a share. That leaves the company headed for shareholder approval of the $10.85 a share deal from Chatham Asset Management. The strategic party “did not provide specific reasons for its withdrawal.” Separately, the company noted in two recent SEC filings that its computer systems had been attacked. The first “intrusion” was disclosed December 27, when they shut down their servers and systems and began a forensic investigation. The update on January 18 […]

Hachette Livre has acquired the remaining shares of genre publisher Bragelonne and Bragelonne Games, building on their minority investment from 2019. The terms of the deal were not announced. Founded in 2000, Bragelonne has a catalog of over 4,000 titles — including Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher books. Hachette will make Bragelonne part of their illustrated division, led by Isabelle Magna. Astra Publishing House has acquired children’s comics publisher Toon Books, which will become an imprint of Astra Books for Young Readers. Publisher, editorial director and senior designer Françoise Mouly founded Toon in 2008. Astra is distributed by Penguin Random House Publisher […]

Pearson has acquired Credly, a digital workforce certification company valued at approximately $200 million. Pearson already had a 20 percent stake in the company, and used available cash and liquidity to purchase the remainder, paying $140 million and a deferred consideration. Credly will be part of Pearson’s Workforce Skills division, following their 2021 acquisition of workforce AI platform Faethm. “The Credly acquisition is another important step in accelerating our strategy in the workforce skills market and in building connectivity across the entire Pearson portfolio…. Credly complements our other recent acquisition – Faethm – to address the full learner journey, enabling […]

The slow but persistent battle over who will buy RR Donnelly continues. The unidentified strategic buyer has increased its bid to $11.50 a share after completing its due diligence — but they still need until February 8 to finalize their financing. In the meantime, Donnelly is moving forward with their latest formal agreement, in which Chatham Asset Management is paying $10.85 a share, aiming for a shareholder vote on February 23. The “strategic buyer” has promised it will pay back to the company the $12 million expense payment due to Chatham if the current agreement is terminated, along with the […]