Bertelsmann Acquiring Simon & Schuster For $2.18 Billion

By Amit Chowdhry ● Nov 29, 2020
  • German media company Bertelsmann SE announced it is buying Simon & Schuster from ViacomCBS for $2.18 billion in an all-cash deal. These are the details.

German media company Bertelsmann SE announced it is buying Simon & Schuster from ViacomCBS for $2.18 billion in an all-cash deal — which is expected to close next year. Through this acquisition, Bertelsmann will gain even more book publishing market share as it also runs Penguin Random House. And ViacomCBS has been planning to divest from operations that have less to do with video content.

According to Bloomberg, Bertelsmann outbid HarperCollins (owned by News Corp) and Vivendi SA. Some of the notable authors who have published books under Simon & Schuster include Bob Woodward, Carrie Fisher, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Hillary Clinton, Howard Stern, Stephen King, R. L. Stine, Shel Silverstein, and Walter Isaacson. As of last year, Simon & Schuster had employed around 1,500 people around the world and generated sales of $814 million.

Bertelsmann CEO Thomas Rabe said that teh company went through a wide-range antitrust analysis before pursuing the deal and whether it could be approved. During a call with reporters, Rabe also cited data from the American Association of Publishers that shows that the combined revenue of the two companies would be less than 20% of the U.S. market.

Larger publishers have been losing larger market share in recent years and smaller publishers have been gaining marketshare. Some of the smaller publishers have been propped up by publishing through Amazon.

Going forward, Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp and CFO Dennis Eulau will continue their roles.