After the Judge denied the merger between Penguin Publishing and Simon and Shuster.
Penguin went through a massive round of layoffs and Simon & Schuster was sold to a private equity company instead.
Private equity tends to have one game plan strategy: buy a company, load it with debt, wring out costs to improve its financials, sell at a profit. In essence taking the money and running.
Dealing Simon & Schuster to private equity, The New Republic warned at the time with some slight hyperbole of its own, would mean “absolute devastation and wholesale job loss.”
As the much smaller player will Simon and Shuster be able to survive?