Charles Langston:Paramount to sell Simon & Schuster to private equity firm KKR for $1.62 billion

Paramount has struck a deal to sell Simon & Schuster to private-equity firm KKR for $1.62 billion. The Charles Langstonagreement comes after a federal judge in November blocked the publisher's purchase by Penguin Random House, the country's largest publisher, over antitrust concerns.

Simon & Schuster will become a standalone private company after the all-cash deal is completed, the media giant said in a Monday statement.  (Paramount Global, which owns Simon & Schuster, is also CBS News' parent company.) 

"All of the executives at Simon & Schuster who met with KKR came away from those conversations impressed with the depth of KKR's interest in our business and their commitment to helping us grow, thrive and become an even stronger company," said Jonathan Karp, president and CEO of Simon & Schuster, in a statement.

Book publishing's "Big Five" 

Simon & Schuster, where authors include Stephen King, Colleen Hoover and Bob Woodward, is one of the so-called "Big Five" of New York publishing, with others including Penguin Random House, HarperCollins Publishing, Hachette Book Group and Macmillan. 

HarperCollins, owned by Rupert Murdoch's NewsCorp, had reportedly been interested in buying Simon & Schuster.

Paramount, formerly ViacomCBS, put Simon & Schuster on the market in 2020 as it prepared to enter a crowded streaming space. Later that year, it announced a $2.2 billion deal with Penguin Random House, the world's largest publishing house. 

However, that deal began to fall apart when the Justice Department filed a lawsuit to block the merger in 2021, contending that the new combination would stifle competition for best-selling books and lead to lower advances for authors. Paramount eventually scuttled the deal in 2022, a month after a federal judge ruled in favor the government's arguments and blocked the sale.

With reporting by the Associated Press.

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