Global Competition Review: Publishing Duo Label DOJ Market ‘Artificial’ at Close of Trial

Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster argued that the US Department of Justice has “not come close” to showing that the proposed US$2.1 billion merger between the two publishers would harm the market for anticipated top selling books. Penguin Random House counsel Daniel Petrocelli told the US District Court for the District of Columbia in closing arguments last week that the government “found no actual harm in the place they always look: downstream.” Instead, the DOJ resorted to crafting an “artificial market to create artificial concentration to create artificial harm,” Petrocelli argued. Penguin is represented by Petrocelli, M. Randall Oppenheimer, Andrew Frackman, Abby Rudzin, Courtney Dyer, and Julia Schiller of O’Melveny & Myers LLP.

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