After two years of fierce battle, the acquisition of Simon & Schuster (world number four in the sector and owned by Paramount Global) by the world number 1 in publishing Penguin Random House (subsidiary of the German Bertelsmann) should not ultimately have venue.
The $2.18 billion deal was blocked by a US federal judge at the end of October, after a trial lasting several weeks.
Joe Biden's administration, very attentive to concentrations in the media and technology sectors, had filed a lawsuit through the United States Department of Justice (DOJ).
She felt that the juggernaut resulting from this merger risked reducing the number of works published, disrupting the price of books for readers and reducing the financial advances made to authors.
The set would have represented almost half of the publishing rights of future bestsellers.
Antitrust nervousness
Today, while the Bertelsmann subsidiary wanted to appeal this decision...
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