14 August 2023
Just after 4p.m. on Monday afternoon in New York, Simon & Schuster c.e.o. Jonathan Karp announced in a letter to his staff that the company's owner, Paramount Global, had agreed to sell S&S to KKR (Kohlberg, Kravis, Roberts & Co), one of the world's largest investment firms. Ever since the Bertelsmann-Penguin Random House deal to purchase S&S from Paramount collapsed last fall after the US Department of Justice successfully sued to stop it on anti-trust grounds, KKR had been widely mooted as front-runner among prospective buyers. "There were a lot of them," Karp emphasised in his letter, although S&S did not specify names or provide a number.