What's at stake as book publishing merger faces U.S. antitrust trial

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Penguin Random House announced its bid to acquire Simon & Schuster in November 2020. The deal -- combining two of the top five book publishers in the United States -- normally would have taken effect by now. But the U.S. Justice Department is standing in the way, and an antitrust trial is set to begin on Monday.

Judge Florence Pan of the US District Court in Washington, D.C. will hear about three weeks of oral arguments. The government says, in its pre-trial brief, that the publisher combo "would further entrench the largest publishing giant in the United States and give the merged company control of nearly half of the market to acquire anticipated top-selling books from authors."

"The closely watched case holds major implications for a publishing industry that has been grappling with consolidation for years," Publishers Weekly reporter Andrew Albanese. "It also looms as a key test for the government amid growing calls for more vigilant antitrust enforcement, and in the wake of a stinging defeat in 2018 in its bid to block the massive $85 billion merger between AT&T and Time Warner.

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