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Inside Book Publishing’s Merger Mania – and Why Antitrust Laws Won’t Slow It Down

By  |  May 12, 2021

By J. Clara Chan, The Wrap

“A lot of the talk and the fear and the anger is about things that are none of the business of the law,” one merger expert says

Move over, Hollywood. Merger mania has come for the book publishing industry.

On the tail of massive acquisitions in the entertainment and media space, such as AT&T’s $85 billion purchase of Time Warner in 2018, thew 2019 re-merger of ViacomCBS and Disney’s $71 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox in 2019, major book publishers are embarking on their own consolidations in an effort to cement their place in an increasingly competitive environment. But are any of these major acquisitions anti-competitive, as critics have argued?

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