The Bookseller - Comment - The questions raised by KKR's S&S buy

Certainly, HarperCollins was chasing the deal, as it had first time around, although later scoffing at the $2.18bn Bertelsmann was prepared to pay. This time the price-tag was cheaper: KKR is handing over $1.62bn all-cash. (The $200m termination fee Bertelsmann was obliged to pay bumps the money up a bit further.) It made sense that Paramount would go for a private equity buyer rather than a publisher: the sale wouldn' involve that same kind of anti-trust scrutiny. And lest we forget, KKR had been interested in buying S&S from the beginning, along with Bertelsmann, Harper et al. Richard Sarnoff, the chairman of media at KKR, about whom Karp spoke admiringly in his letter, has generally been credited with leading the charge. Sarnoff is a publishing insider: in a previous life, he was executive vice-president and c.f.o. at Random House, at a time when Karp himself was an editorial high-flyer there.