Paramount has sold Simon & Schuster to private equity giant KKR for just over $1.6 billion.
👉 Background: Simon & Schuster is the book publisher that began way back in 1924. They've got a whole list of big name authors on their roster, such as Stephen King, Colleen Hoover, and even Hillary Clinton.
👉 What happened: Simon & Schuster was kinda owned by Paramount Global by default, after Paramount acquired Viacom. Last year, Paramount tried to offload the publisher to another publisher, Penguin Random House, last year for $2.2 billion USD... buuuut a Federal Judge blocked it.
👉 What else: So now, Paramount has sold Simon & Schuster to private equity giant KKR for just over $1.6 billion. It was keen to get rid of the publisher for focus and to stem the bleeding on their losses.
💡In the world of mergers and acquisitions, sometimes entities inherit assets that don't fit into their core strategic direction.
💡While valuable in its own right, Simon & Schuster wasn't aligned with Paramount's core entertainment and streaming focus.
💡This isn't uncommon; Verizon acquired Yahoo in 2017, and with it came Tumblr, which Yahoo had previously purchased in 2013 for about $1.1 billion. Just two years later in 2019, Verizon sold Tumblr to the owner of WordPress for a rumoured price of less than $3 million.
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