Why Random House was worth more with Bertelsmann

Introduction Random house was started up in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and David Klopfer with only $50,000 in working capital. What started off as a small publishing business grew into a company worth over $800 million through mergers and acquisitions . After Random House was purchased by Bertelsmann, it became the largest book publishing company in the world. This paper examines why Random House is worth more as a subsidiary of Bertelsmann than as an independent company. In our …

…Looking at the top 5 publishing companies, all of them are under the shelter of a big media conglomerates . Random House benefited in numerous ways from the Bertelsmann acquisition. It was able to gain competitive advantages in terms of operational resources that it would not have achieved as a stand alone company. Hence, it went from being a company that could not turn in a profit before the acquisition, to a company with a 10% Ebitda in 2001 .