Source says Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. has placed bid for Penguin
A source claims that News Corp., the owner of HarperCollins, has made a bid to Pearson PLC for $1.6 billion
By Prachi GuptaTopics: Books, Rupert Murdoch, Publishing, Random House, HarperCollins, news corp, News
An insider has told the New York Times that News Corp., Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate, is in negotiations to bid on Pearson PLC’s Penguin book publishing division. The Times reports:
News Corporation’s interest comes just days after Pearson confirmed that German media giant Bertelsmann, the parent company of Random House, had approached the British company about acquiring its Penguin division.
News Corporation owns HarperCollins, one of the units of the media conglomerate that will soon be spun off into a separate publicly traded company consisting of other print assets like The Wall Street Journal and The New York Post.
According to the source, News Corp. made a cash offer of $1.6 billion, which the Times points out “could blunt a potential merger with Random House.”
Murdoch’s business has a vested interest in the potential Random House-Penguin merger; if it goes through, the company would would control “roughly 25 percent of all books published in the United States,” creating serious competition for HarperCollins.
Prachi Gupta is an Assistant News Editor for Salon, focusing on pop culture. Follow her on Twitter at @prachigu or email her at pgupta@salon.com. More Prachi Gupta.
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