Paramount sells publishing conglomerate Simon & Schuster for $1.62 billion

Simon & Schuster publishing house, one of the big five in USA and among the most important in the world, it has just been sold by its mother company, Paramount Global, to the investment fund KKR for a price of US$ 1,620 million in cash.

Publishing such well-known bestsellers as Stephen King and Mary Higgins Clark, Simon & Schuster was born almost a century ago, in 1924, and is responsible for some of the greatest publishing successes of the past century, though lately it has been losing the battle against its great rival in the industry, Penguin Random House.

The operation has yet to receive the green light from the regulatory bodies.

In the last few hours, the publisher published a statement announcing the purchase agreement, which according to her “It will deliver significant benefit to Paramount shareholders while positioning Simon & Schuster for a new phase of growth”.

The statement clarifies that the publisher will continue to operate as an independent private company and will continue to be led by Jonathan Karp as CEO and Dennis Eulau as chief operating officer.

The sale is also announced, Karp was full of praise for the new owners, saying that KKR had “impressed by the depth of his interest in our industry and his commitment to our growth.”

For its part, KKR says it will push the Simon & Schuster name to remain “one of the best known editorials of the world” with more than 36,000 titles among its assets in both fiction -adult and children’s-, non-fiction, audio products and other categories.

Finally, to assuage potential fears of downsizing, KKR says it will promote a program so that the publisher’s 1,600 employees can enjoy stock benefits when the transaction closes, just as the fund’s 60,000 employees enjoyed in the thirty companies he owns in different branches.

Source: EFE