Simon & Schuster Sold to KKR
Private investment firm KKR has reached an agreement to acquire Simon & Schuster from parent company Paramount Global for $1.62 billion. 
Paramount has been trying to sell Simon & Schuster for years, with last year’s proposed $2.175 billion sale to Penguin Random House only failing because the Department of Justice blocked the deal on antitrust grounds. Simon & Schuster’s revenues in 2022 were $1.18 billion.
The deal will likely close by the end of 2023, and Simon & Schuster will become a private company, though it will still be led by Jonathan Karp (CEO) and Dennis Eulau (COO and CFO).
KKR says they will “support numerous growth initiatives, including extending Simon & Schuster’s strong domestic publishing program across various genres and categories, expanding its distribution relationships and accelerating growth in international markets.” KKR’s also announced plans to create “a broad-based equity ownership program to provide all of the company’s more than 1,600 employees the opportunity to participate in the benefits of ownership after the transaction closes.”
The chairman of media at KKR is a publishing veteran, Richard Sarnoff, who was once CFO at Bantam Doubleday Dell and was closely involved in the acquisition of Random House by German conglomerate Bertelsmann. Karp wrote to staff that he has worked with Sarnoff in the past, and that “Richard understands the nuances of the book business as well as anyone I know.”
For more, see the report in Publishers Weekly.
