Topline
Paramount Global struck a deal on Monday to sell off publishing giant Simon & Schuster to private equity firm KKR for $1.62 billion, the media company announced, two years after a colossal deal to sell the publisher fell apart due to antitrust issues.
Paramount Global agreed to a deal to sell Simon & Schuster for $1.62 billion.
Key Facts
KKR will acquire the publisher in an all-cash transaction, CBS parent Paramount announced, making Simon & Schuster a standalone private company under its current CEO Jonathan Karp and COO Dennis Eulau.
The deal for the New York-based publishing house, whose published authors include Bob Woodward, Carrie Fisher, Hunter S. Thompson, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Shel Silverstein, has not closed, and still requires regulatory approval.
In a statement, KKR said the company plans to expand big-five publishing company Simon & Schuster’s domestic publishing across genres and “accelerate” growth internationally.
Key Background
The deal marks the end of a saga to sell the 99-year-old publishing company, after it announced plans in late 2020 to sell to Penguin Random House for nearly $2.2 billion. That deal was quashed last year, after the Department of Justice won a lawsuit to block the deal one year earlier, alleging the acquisition would stifle competition and result in less money for authors and fewer books published. Federal officials in that case argued the deal would have been “likely to diminish overall output, creativity, and diversity” of published books, though plaintiffs argued the deal would have “enhance[d] competition” by pooling resources. As a result of the deal falling flat, Penguin Random House was required to pay Paramount Global $200 million, according to the terms of the proposed agreement.
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