Penguin Random House CEO Resigns
Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle will step down from his leadership role at the world's largest consumer book publisher by the end of the year. Parent company Bertelsmann announced his resignation publicly on Friday.
Facts
- Penguin Random House CEO Markus Dohle will step down from his leadership role at the world's largest consumer book publisher by the end of the year. Parent company Bertelsmann announced his resignation publicly on Friday.
- Dohle's resignation comes just weeks after a US judge blocked a $2.2B merger between Penguin Random House and rival Simon & Schuster. Dohle was reportedly the primary architect of the deal.
- The US Justice Department sued to stop the deal on antitrust grounds, arguing that a merger would be bad for competition and harmful to authors. The government won the case at the end of October, a ruling that cost the company more than $200M.
- According to Bertelsmann, Dohle is leaving at "his own request and on the best of mutual terms." Nihar Malaviya, current president and COO of Penguin Random House, will take over as interim CEO from Jan. 1.
- Dohle became CEO of Random House in 2008 and was then appointed Penguin Random House's first CEO after managing the merger of Random House and Penguin in July 2013.
Sources: Reuters, Publishers Weekly, New York Times, CBS, and US News.
Narratives
- Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Fortune. Play silly games, win silly prizes. It's no surprise that Markus Dohle has left Penguin Random House. What a disaster of a plan that, as CEO, he was responsible for. Dohle has enough industry experience that he should have been able to see this coming — the deal as proposed would have lessened competition for top-selling books and been a blow for authors. This is a win against rampant mergers and acquisitions that ultimately hurt consumers.
- Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by MSN. The collapse of Penguin Random House’s proposed purchase of rival Simon & Schuster was orchestrated by external forces in an unfair and unprecedented manner. Unfortunately, Dohle was caught in the crossfire. The merger would have helped combat a changing book landscape in the face of e-commerce giants like Amazon, while increasing competition and payments to authors.
