SIMON & SCHUSTER SALE-BOUND; VIACOM PUTS MUCH OF PUBLISHING GIANT ON BLOCK.Byline: Kevin Shinkle Bloomberg News Viacom put much of its Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster U.S. publishing company. It was founded in 1924 by Richard L. Simon (1899–1960) and M. Lincoln Schuster (1897–1970), whose initial project, the original crossword-puzzle book, was a best-seller. book-publishing company up for sale, a move that could bring the media company as much as $4 billion. The businesses, which include the publisher's educational, professional and reference segments, have annual sales of about $2 billion. Viacom will keep Simon & Schuster's consumer business, which produced a string of best-sellers last year. Viacom is likely to use proceeds from the sale to halve halve tr.v. halved, halv·ing, halves 1. To divide (something) into two equal portions or parts. 2. To lessen or reduce by half: halved the recipe to serve two. 3. its $8 billion debt, analysts said. It comes amid speculation by analysts that Viacom also will spin off its Blockbuster chain of video stores eventually to focus on its cable TV channels such as MTV MTV in full Music Television U.S. cable television network, established in 1980 to present videos of musicians and singers performing new rock music. MTV won a wide following among rock-music fans worldwide and greatly affected the popular-music business. and its Paramount Pictures movie studio in Hollywood. ``You will have a smaller but much sexier company with more attractive assets,'' said Richard Read Richard Read (born 1957) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist. Born in St Andrews, Scotland and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Read graduated from Amherst College in 1980 and worked for a Massachusetts crime commission before moving to Portland, Oregon to , analyst at Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder. New York-based Viacom also said its troubled Blockbuster chain is showing signs of turning around. Same-stores sales at outlets open a year rose in the fourth quarter, the first increase in a year and a half, and continued to gain in January. The company has been revamping the chain by adding more copies of hit movies and focusing on renting videos rather than selling merchandise. Viacom said it expects to reach an agreement in the second quarter this year for its publishing assets. Possible buyers could include McGraw-Hill Cos. and Bantam Bantam Former city and sultanate, Java. It was located at the western end of Java between the Java Sea and the Indian Ocean. In the early 16th century it became a powerful Muslim sultanate, which extended its control over parts of Sumatra and Borneo. Doubleday Dell, owned by Bertelsmann A.G., analysts said. Viacom Chairman and Chief Executive Sumner Redstone Sumner Murray Redstone (born Sumner Murray Rothstein on May 27 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts) is majority owner and Chairman of the Board of the National Amusements theater chain. Through National Amusements, he is majority owner of Midway Games, Viacom and CBS Corporation. said shareholders would receive more value from a sale of Simon & Schuster, acquired in its purchase of Paramount, than by keeping all of the assets and continuing to build the businesses. The transaction ``will make us a stronger competitor in our core entertainment operations,'' he told investors at a Salomon Smith Barney Smith Barney is a division of Citigroup Global Capital Markets Inc., a global, full-service financial firm, that provides brokerage, investment banking and asset management services to corporations, governments and individuals around the world. conference in Rancho Mirage. Simon & Schuster is one of the most profitable book publishers in an industry that's been hurt by lower sales, analysts said. It is the largest educational and computer book publisher. Simon & Schuster's brands include Pocket Books, Scribner, Prentice-Hall and Allyn & Bacon. |
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