Tuesday, February 16, 1999

2/16/99: ReedElsevier, Harpercollins, Bertelsmann,

Publishing News: 2/16/99
Newcomb leads race for Reed Elsevier CEO
Children's Television Workshop Signs Agreement Random House Inc.
Tina Brown’s Talk Magazine
Trinity opens due diligence on Mirror
HarperCollins Announces Plans to Acquire the Ecco Press
Bertelsmann expects JV with Havas in 2 weeks time
Coopers & Lybrand pays $5.4MM in Maxwell case

Newcomb leads race for Reed Elsevier CEO
Don’t be surprised to see ex Simon & Schuster CEO Jon Newcomb made Chairman and CEO of UK/Dutch publishing giant Reed Elsevier. Industry sources peg him as the leading candidate for the job which has essentially been vacant for five months.

Children's Television Workshop Signs Agreement Random House Inc.
Children's Television Workshop (CTW), the multimedia educational company that created "Sesame Street," has agreed a long-term development agreement with Random House Inc. CTW has also agreed to pursue television production initiatives with Random House, whose parent company Bertelsmann AG has extensive broadcast channel and programming holdings in Europe. As of July 1, the Random House Children's Media Group will build on its long-term relationship with CTW and "Sesame Street" books by adding new formats such as storybooks, color and activity books, and workbooks for publication and distribution in the United States and Canadian markets. By further expanding and combining its own 30-year-old publishing program with Random House to include these new formats, CTW will be able to create a more visible and synergistic presence at retail for its books as well as a stronger, more broadly integrated publishing program. Both companies will explore developing books from CTW television properties other than "Sesame Street" and creating television programming based on book properties whose dramatic rights are held by Random House Children's Media Group
Source: Businesswire 2/11/99

Tina Brown’s Talk Magazine
Miramax Films and Hearst Magazines announced today that they have entered into a joint-venture agreement to publish Talk, a new general interest monthly magazine edited by Tina Brown. The magazine will debut in August with the September, 1999 edition. Under the terms of the agreement, Hearst Magazines, the world's largest publisher of monthly magazines, will take a 50 percent joint-ownership stake in Talk magazine and assume certain management responsibilities including circulation and manufacturing management, as well as newsstand distribution and subscription fulfillment through its subsidiaries Hearst Distribution Group, Inc. and Communications Data Services. Miramax's Talk Media will be responsible for editorial content, advertising sales and marketing. Talk magazine, which will premiere with a circulation of 500,000, will be a provocative and topical publication offering commentary, criticism, reporting, opinion and profiles. In July of last year, Miramax Films established Talk Media in conjunction with Tina Brown and Ron Galotti to publish Talk magazine, produce television programming and publish books.
Source Businesswire 2/11/99

Trinity opens due diligence on Mirror
TRINITY, the UK's largest regional newspaper group, has begun due diligence at the Mirror Group in preparation for a second assault on the embattled newspaper company later this month. The news comes only days after it emerged that Regional Independent Media, publisher of the Yorkshire Post, was likely to revise its £913 million cash offer for the Mirror over the next few weeks. However, many believe the new bid will not be much higher than the 200p a share already offered. It is understood that over the past two days Trinity has been given access to a "data room" containing commercially sensitive information about the Mirror, whose national newspaper titles include The Mirror and The People. Trinity is believed to have seen the commercial data for only 24 hours, and has already requested more detailed information. However, Trinity is not expected to make a bid for the Mirror immediately, because it feels it needs to look further into the finances of the company. Those close to the situation believe a bid is more likely over the next few weeks. The bidding battle for the Mirror has already resulted in a bloody boardroom coup at the company, which saw the dramatic resignation of David Montgomery as its chief executive last month.
Source: Financial Times 2/15/99

HarperCollins Announces Plans to Acquire the Ecco Press
Jane Friedman, President and CEO of HarperCollins Publishers today announced that HarperCollins will purchase The Ecco Press, one of the country's most prestigious literary publishers. The acquisition will become effective as of July 1. The Ecco list includes such critically acclaimed authors as John Ashbery, Paul Bowles, Italo Calvino, Gerald Early, Richard Ford, Louise Gluck, Robert Hass, Zbigniew Herbert, Bobbi Ann Mason, Cormac McCarthy, Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz, Joyce Carol Oates, and Tobias Wolff. In addition, Halpern will publish his first books with HarperCollins starting in January, 2000.
Source: Businesswire 2/16/99

Bertelsmann expects JV with Havas in 2 weeks time
German media giant Bertelsmann AG expects to complete a joint venture deal on specialist publishing with France's Havas within the next two weeks. A spokesman for Bertelsmann's specialist publishing unit said the deal entailed a 50-50 joint venture with the aim of making international acquisitions together. In a related issue, the spokesman also said that Bertelsmann's takeover of the Springer scientific publishing house had been approved by the European Union cartel authorities. The acquisition increases the value of Bertelsmann's trade publishing activities to 1.5 billion marks ($859.6 million) from 625 million marks
Source: Reuters 2/16/99

Coopers & Lybrand pays $5.4MM in Maxwell case
Coopers & Lybrand has paid fines and costs of $5.4MM for failings in its role as auditor of most of the companies controlled by the late Robert Maxwell, a British accounting watchdog said on this week. Maxwell died in November 1991 (fell off his boat), leaving behind a business empire riddled with debts and huge holes in the pension funds of his companies, including Mirror Group Newspapers which Maxwell owned at the time.
Source: Reuters 2/16/99

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