Publishing

Pearson buyout would go beyond textbook

19 Feb 2016

The $9.5 bln education publisher’s relatively clean balance sheet normally might attract private-equity buyers. The trouble for now is reticent debt markets and a stock price that isn’t especially cheap. There also have been duds in the sector. Even so, the math could work.

Pearson buys some time with latest shakeup

21 Jan 2016

The educational publisher’s shares gained 10 pct on the back of a big restructuring plan despite a warning that earnings would suffer this year before stabilising at the end of 2017. The post-FT reality check is welcome, but it’s far from clear Pearson can return to growth. 

Review: Fed founders wouldn’t recognize their baby

30 Oct 2015

In “America’s Bank,” Roger Lowenstein shows how the Federal Reserve was created to act as lender of last resort and little more. Since then, there’s been mission creep with many ill consequences. A century after its foundation, the central bank needs to address its failings.

Hef’s cover-up exposes magazine industry softness

13 Oct 2015

Playboy is to stop publishing pictures of nude women and focus on journalism to try to boost sagging readership. But print industry ad revenue is down 30 pct since 2000 and competition is fierce. The notion that more men really will read Playboy for the articles could be a tease.

Review: A human face for the foreclosure fiasco

25 Sep 2015

Seven years on and the financial crisis blame game is still alive and well. In his new film, “99 Homes,” Ramin Bahrani crafts a dramatic narrative that does the best job yet of capturing the complexity of assigning accountability to the collective U.S. housing delusion.

Best chapter in Pearson breakup story yet to come

5 Aug 2015

The media group can soon sell its 47 pct stake in publisher Penguin Random House to co-owner Bertelsmann. Including future synergies, the stake could fetch $2.7 billion, twice what Pearson got for the FT. Since the venture could get more valuable still, waiting looks better.

Donnelley proves an old dog can learn new tricks

4 Aug 2015

The 150-year-old printer is splitting in three, spinning off fast-growing services from stodgier publishing. Investors like the deal and the better value it portends. So much so, the only vexing question is whether the firm keeps giving all employees its classic holiday books.

Review: Dealmaking when lives are at stake

10 Jul 2015

Financiers like to compare their negotiations to military strategy. Yet the art of the deal matters far more when those talking also kill. Jonathan Powell’s “Terrorists at the Table” is a primer like few others, by a worldly ex-diplomat of stubborn hope. It’s also darkly funny.

Review: The slow, painful grind to safer banks

29 May 2015

It’s now received wisdom that America can’t afford to forget financial crises. Veteran FDIC bank examiner John Bovenzi manages to corral the evidence in a surprisingly readable book, joining the dots from the 1980s S&L rout to the start of too-big-to-fail and subprime stupidity.

Review: The lucrative and controversial Blair Inc

20 Mar 2015

Tony Blair has made a small fortune after stepping down as UK prime minister, advising illiberal leaders from Kuwait to Kazakhstan. A timely new book details his awkward juggling of paid and non-profit work. Blair is an extreme example of a wider challenge to politics.

Simpler is better for Reed Elsevier

26 Feb 2015

The dual-listed media giant is fixing a baroque corporate setup. That should lure new investors and cut the discount on its Dutch shares. A simultaneous rebrand as “RELX” is ungainly – but at least this helps distance the largely digital group from the printed past.

Reed at $38 bln rubs up against new class of peers

23 Feb 2015

Reed Elsevier is set to report another year of metronomic financial performance. As the threat of “open access” journals fades, optimists will argue the Anglo-Dutch group now looks more like Nestle than a humble publisher. That still looks a bit of a stretch.

Review: Fixing the CIA – a novel approach

26 Dec 2014

Could an outsider best reform the CIA in the wake of torture revelations? In David Ignatius’ novel “The Director,” a pro-privacy tech CEO tries to drag an agency that has lost its way into a new world of tighter rules, leaky secrets and cyberthreats. Good idea, uneven results.

Review: The shirk ethic – a user’s guide

28 Nov 2014

Work can be seen as a blessing or a curse. In “Empty Labor,” Roland Paulsen examines people who take mostly the latter view, asking how and why they shirk, and whether it’s always a bad thing. His study of idleness on the job is enlightening, amusing and sad.

Review: Through a distorting mirror, darkly

14 Nov 2014

William Gibson’s novel “The Peripheral” paints future worlds that are built of present fears writ large. Algorithms not only roil financial markets, they travel in time. Nanotech eats people. Money corrupts and spies surveil, even more than now. Yet human decency has a chance.

Publicis overpays with $3.7 bln digital takeover

3 Nov 2014

The French ad giant is buying U.S. digital specialist Sapient. The all-cash takeover comes at a big premium and with limited scope for synergies. This looks a value-destructive attempt to distract from Publicis’ faltering performance after its failed merger with Omnicom.

Gannett split puts digital on wrong side of divide

5 Aug 2014

The media company is spinning off newspapers, including USA Today, to unburden its TV arm. Cars.com, which Gannett is buying at a $2.5 bln valuation, would have buffered the weaker half in a similar way to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp carve-up. Instead, print must stand on its own.

Review: "House of Debt" diagnosis beats remedies

13 Jun 2014

Atif Mian and Amir Sufi make a compelling case that excess consumer debt caused the U.S. Great Recession’s severity, but their mortgage bailout proposal would make matters worse. Their shared value mortgages might help, but old-fashioned tight money is a simpler and better way.

Gannett carve-up is just a matter of Time

4 Jun 2014

The $6.6 bln owner of USA Today isn’t getting credit for its TV transformation. Apply broadcaster valuations, and the newspapers are all but ignored by investors. As Time Warner sets free its publishing arm this week, a Breakingviews analysis suggests Gannett should do the same.

Heed New York Times governance risk headlines

21 May 2014

Investors surrendering their rights to founders at Facebook, Google, Alibaba and elsewhere may want to consider the management kerfuffle at the Grey Lady. It’s what can happen when, down the line, the competent leaders they entrusted are gone and their successors entrenched.