- A federal judge blocks publishing behemoth Penguin Random House from acquiring rival Simon & Schuster.
- The $2.2 billion deal, announced in November 2020, would have brought together two of the top five American publishers.
- US Justice Department argued against mega-merger.
A federal judge prevented publishing giant Penguin Random House from acquiring competitor Simon & Schuster, siding with the US Department of Justice, which had opposed the mega-merger. Prince Harry’s memoirs were published by the Duke of Sussex, who encountered a major setback.
The $2.2 billion deal, announced in November 2020, would have brought together two of the top five American publishers.
In her decision, US District Court Judge Florence Pan stated that the government had convincingly demonstrated that the merger would “substantially” reduce competition “in the market for the US publishing rights to anticipated top-selling books.”
We are excited to announce the remarkably personal and emotionally powerful story of Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex.
SPARE, the highly anticipated #PrinceHarryMemoir, will be published on January 10, 2023. Learn more at https://t.co/mu9zlwYflf pic.twitter.com/Uq0Noch08C
— Penguin Random House 🐧🏠📚 (@penguinrandom) October 27, 2022
Pan stated that her decision would be issued under seal because it relied on confidential business information.
Penguin Random House, a subsidiary of the German Bertelsmann Group, dominates the industry in the United States with 10,000 employees worldwide and nearly 15,000 books published per year.
Simon & Schuster, which is owned by Paramount, is the fourth largest of America’s “Big Five” publishing conglomerates, along with HarperCollins, Hachette Book Group USA, and Macmillan Publishers.
Authors on the Simon & Schuster roster include Stephen King and Doris Kearns Goodwin, while Penguin Random House publishes books by Barack and Michelle Obama and John Grisham.
It also plans to publish Prince Harry’s memoir in early 2023.
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