ViacomCBS would have found the acquirer of its activities in the Simon & Schuster edition.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the American media group, in the process of refocusing on the audiovisual sector, would have signed with Bertelmann, parent company of Penguin Random House, which would put on the table more than 2 billion dollars, or significantly more than that. ViacomCBS hoped for (1.2 billion).
In this operation, which has not yet been firmly concluded, Penguin Random House, which is already the number one publishing company in the United States and in the world (3.6 billion euros in turnover for a market share estimated at a quarter of world sales), could strengthen its rank by earning around a third of book sales across the Atlantic.
Simon & Schuster, number three in the American market, and Penguin Random House together publish the best-sellers of Stephen King, Bob Woodward, Dan Brown and John Grisham.
Content factories for series
Revealed in March before the first confinement due to the health crisis, the process of selling Simon & Schuster ($ 814 million in sales in 2019 for $ 143 million in operating income) was slowed down by the circumstances .
But it has nonetheless aroused the envy of many suitors.
In this case all the world publishing champions.
Bertelsmann, who came out of the woods last September, would win under the beards of two French publishing players, Hachette Livre (Lagardère), which has a turnover of 2.4 billion euros, and Editis (Vivendi, 750 million euros), and an American, HarperCollins (1.7 billion dollars), owned by News Corp, the media giant controlled by Rupert Murdoch.
The appetite is great for the publishing houses which have become, thanks to an entertainment market dominated by Netflix, Amazon or Disney platforms in search of original content, pools of talent to feed their bulimia. of series production.
The publishing market is also showing generally - and this has been even clearer since the start of the current crisis - good resistance to the general drop in consumption.
In the first half of 2020, Bertelsmann's publishing branch thus posted stability at 1.6 billion euros in revenue, while Hachette Livre, present in France and the United States, fell only 8.3%, and Editis by 15%.
