The Delaware Chancery Court rejected a dissident shareholder’s request for a preliminary injunction blocking Barnes & Noble Education’s annual meeting. Sunil Suri at Bay Capital Finance has been trying to nominate four directors for election to the bookseller’s board, but he acquired stock too late to qualify. Vice Chancellor Kathaleen S. McCormick said, “Bay Capital blew the deadline. It then made up excuses for doing so. Nothing in the record suggests the company [BNED] was in any way at fault.” She called conflicts and flaws in the complaint “a little bit shocking.” According to Law360’s account of the hearing, the court […]
Legal
People, Etc.
At Flatiron, Bryn Clark has been promoted to editor and Sarah Murphy to executive editor. Agnes Ahlander Turner has been promoted to executive vice president at Maria B. Campbell Associates, and Beniamino Ambrosi and Johanna Gustavsson both been named vice president. In the UK, Noel Murphy will join Granta Books and Granta Magazine as commercial director starting September 23. He was previously sales and marketing director at Yale University Press. Imprints Orion will launch Dash, a digital fiction imprint, this fall, run by commissioning editor Victoria Oundjian. Bookselling April Newton (£8.37 an hour), Kimi Wright (£8.71 an hour), Stefan Pace […]
Disclosing A Second Shareholder Suit, Barnes & Noble Says Both “Lack Merit”
Barnes & Noble formally updated their tender offer documents to acknowledge the shareholder suit from Richard Scarantino, and a similar separate suit filed by David Shaev on July 17, also alleging the company did not disclose certain required information in their offer. BN notes, “The defendants believe that these complaints lack merit but cannot predict the outcome of these matters.”
Simon & Schuster Objects to Audible’s “Unauthorized and Brazen Infringement,” As Does AAP
Simon & Schuster spokesperson Adam Rothberg provided a response to Audible’s new initiative that shows listeners a computer-generated transcription of the text of an audiobook as they listen: “We have informed Audible that we consider its Captions program to be an unauthorized and brazen infringement of the rights of authors and publishers, and a clear violation of our terms of sale. We have therefore insisted that Audible not include in Captions any titles for which Simon & Schuster holds audio or text rights.” Separately, AAP president and ceo Maria Pallante issued a statement in which she called the new Audible […]
Shareholder Sues Over Barnes & Noble Sale; F+W UK Books Business Sold
Investor Richard Scarantino filed suit in a Delaware Federal Court against Barnes & Noble, seeking class action status on behalf of stockholders, arguing that the company’s tender offer solicitation “omits material information with respect to the Proposed Transaction, which renders the Solicitation Statement false and misleading.” From a Google search, filing lawsuits just like this one is the primary activity for which Scarantino is known. In particular, he charges that the statement left out “material information regarding the company’s financial projections” for the future. As well, he alleges it left out certain details about the financial analyses performed by financial […]
Publishers Respond to Audible’s Planned Infringement
The publishing community is responding with appropriate alarm to the preview of Audible Captions, a forthcoming feature that will show listeners a computer-generated transcription of the text of an audiobook as they listen. A USA Today piece mentioned just three particular in-copyright titles set to be captioned (though it says the feature “will be available on hundreds of thousands of audiobooks at launch”). Two of those are Penguin Random House titles: Michelle Obama’s BECOMING and the late Chester Himes’s A RAGE IN HARLEM (the latter is sold in audio as an Audible Studios production narrated by Samuel L. Jackson). A […]