Time Warner Book Group Sold

Posted on February 7, 2006

Bloomberg reports that Time Warner's book group has been sold to French company, Lagardere SCA. Lagardere publishes the French version of The Da Vinci Code. It also owns Elle magazine. The purchase price is $537.5 million, which will make Lagardere the world's third-largest publisher.

Besides publishing its own titles, Time Warner Books acts as a distributor for third parties such as Walt Disney Co. and Microsoft Corp., the Time Warner statement said. The company operates in the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand, it said.
"Lagardere are very, very aggressive," said media analyst Theresa Wise of Accenture Ltd., citing such moves as the Hodder deal and the acquisition three years ago of part of publisher Larousse in France. The deal is also "geographically important" by making Lagardere a bigger player in U.S. publishing, she said.
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"This is a terrific transaction that is the right thing to do for both the Time Warner Book Group and our shareholders," Time Warner Chairman and CEO Richard Parsons said in the statement. The division performed well in 2005 and "is at the top of its game," he said. "To build on this success, however, it needs the scale and other advantages that come from being part of a larger, more global book publisher."

So another giant foreign conglomerate gobbles up a U.S. book company. This is quite a trend. So why is it exactly that American companies can't wait to get out of the book business? We suppose we're lucky that the foreign conglomerates still believe in the future of books.