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Bertelsmann won’t go public

Bertelsmann, the German media conglomerate that owns Random House, will not be going public. After months of speculation that Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, which owns 25% of the company, would sell its shares in a public offering, the Mohn family, which owns Bertelsmann, agreed to pay GBL US$5.8-billion for its interest in the company. Mark Landler reports in The New York Times that the high price was worth it to the Mohns to keep the company under the family’s control. “The family, led by Liz Mohn, the wife of its 84-year-old patriarch, Reinhard Mohn, had grown uncomfortable with the prospect of a public listing, which would have exposed Bertelsmann to the scrutiny of the markets and could have eroded the family’s influence over its affairs,” he writes. “The company … said it would finance the deal initially with bank loans. That will leave Bertelsmann with debt well above its internal targets, crimping its ability to make investments, at least until the end of 2007, when it hopes to have paid off much of the debt. The company said it would repay some of the loans by selling its BMG music publishing operation — a deal that insiders said could be worth more than $1 billion.”

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Click here for The New York Times article

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