The Merger Has Been Finalized – Random Penguin Solutions is Born
Bertelsmann and Pearson have officially announced today that they have completed all the steps required to merge 2 of the world’s largest publishing conglomerates into an even more unwieldy monolith.
Random Penguin Solutions will be jointly owned by Pearson and Bertelsmann, with the latter controlling 53% of the new company.
Random House CEO Markus Dohle will serve as CEO of Random Penguin Solutions and John Makinson, who has headed Penguin since 2002, is the new company’s Chairman of the Board of Directors. The HQ for the new company will follow publishing industry standard practice of wasting money on real estate and be located in New York City. Random Penguin Solutions will employ more than 10,000 people on 6 continents, and it will publish nearly 250 imprints every year. Collected revenues are expected to reach $3.9 billion this year.
The merger follows approval by regulators in the US, Canada, EU, New Zealand, South Africa, and Australia. US approval was dependent on Random Penguin Solutions complying with Penguin-DOJ settlement over Agency Price Fixing lawsuit, meaning that all titles published by the new company will be sold on the wholesale model rather than with price controls.
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