Bertelsmann Confirms Buyback Bertelsmann will pay approximately $5.8 billion to buy back the 25 percent stake in the company held by GBL, preventing a public offering of the shares. In a letter to employees signed by Gunther Thielen and Liz Mohn, they declare that “the price is reasonable, taking into account the strong current trading as well the positive outlook for next years.” The company will finance the repurchase with a bridge loan, and plans to sell off its BMG Music Publishing business to help pay down the loan. That unit is expected to be worth between $1.4 billion and […]

Sales Nudge Up at Borders, But Profits Suffer Poor Borders. They actually outperformed their peers in their fiscal first quarter by showing a small comparable-store sales gain at their domestic superstores of 0.7% (compared, albeit, to a weak quarter a year ago). But losses were higher than anticipated, at 29 cents a share, due to “costs related to strategic initiatives combined with a challenging sales environment… especially in the U.K. and at Waldenbooks stores, but also at domestic Borders superstores late in the quarter.” Those strategic initiatives were supposed to be adding to profits already, but in today’s release, the […]

Deal and No Deal While pretending that they don’t mind seeing the company taken public to try and strengthen their negotiating position, Bertelsmann publicly acknowledged that it is “prepared for a buyback of GBL’s stake at a reasonable price, if the shareholders reach an agreement.” Reasonable price will be the sticking point; Bertelsmann is thinking $4 billion to $5 billion, while the folks at GBL are hoping for $6 billion. How deep will the debt-averse company have to dig to fund the buyback is the next big question. The company says that management and the Mohn family “were unanimously of […]

BEA from All Over USA Today picks expected hits from Mitch Albom, Charles Frazier and John Grisham as the most remarkable BEA books, adding reports of anticipation for novels The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld, The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield (which BN’s Bob Wietrak says will “be as big as The Historian and The Rule of Four”), After This by Alice McDermot, and One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson. The Washington Post’s long convention overview frames the convention as a “clash between what you might call the technorati and the literati. The technorati are thrilled at the way […]

So Long and Thanks for All the Books That could easily be the silent refrain of many convention attendees leaving Washington’s big Giveaway Festival today. The essence of BEA is that people come to see other people, and they come to get stuff. Some didn’t even carry their loot beyond the halls, while others surely pruned strategically in their hotel rooms. And as we know — underscored by a store owner tale of on a encounter last year with a “bookseller” in the women’s room with a stack of galleys, a laptop, and the free wireless connection — at least […]

Today at BEA: So Little Happened, So Much to Stay It’s very Washingtonian that, like the city itself, the new convention center is laid out with layered precision, and yet nothing about it is linear or simple to navigate. If you’re here you know what I mean, and if you’re not it’s hard to explain. Like an upside-down cake with no middle layer, there’s a small hall on the second floor at the culmination of a block-long entrance hall and an endless set of stairs, while the long skinny main hall is two flights down in the basement and has […]