I wonder how many job losses – no, sorry, role eliminations – it will take in total to balance the $200 million fee PRH had to pay after Markus Dohle failed to acquire Simon & Schuster.
“PRH UK confirms 38 roles to go,” runs the headline in the UK trade journal The Bookseller, where Heloise Wood reports: “Penguin Random House UK (PRH UK) has confirmed that 38 roles are being removed from the business, with most affected staff leaving at the end of the year.”
Roles? Is that somehow different from jobs?
If these jobs losses were attributable in some way to AI, the industry would be screaming blue murder. Instead, a token news item and forgotten.
“Most affected staff leaving at the end of the year.”
Merry Christmas from PRH.
I wonder how many job losses – no, sorry, role eliminations – it will take in total to balance the $200 million fee PRH had to pay after Markus Dohle failed to acquire Simon & Schuster.
These lost “roles” of course not to be confused with the spate of US roles eliminated earlier this year.
So much for the “great renaissance” Dohle was fantasising about at Sharjah in May.
Memo to PRH employees. You might be better off finding a job with Simon & Schuster, now owned by KKR, a private equity outfit led by Peter Stavros, who describes himself as an Employee Ownership Advocate.
After KKR sold RBMedia to HIG Capital, RBMedia’s 300 employees, as equity holders since KKR bought RBMedia five years ago, were lined up for pay-outs that would average $50,000 per person when the transfer to HIG Capital was finalised. Employees with ten years standing were expected to pocket $100,000 each.
PRH UK CEO Tom Weldon says the roles lost are due to “longer-term challenges” around growing profits “in the face of increasing cost pressures,” per Wood’s The Bookseller summary. Weldon adds PRH is focused on a “dual strategy to invest to grow while being increasingly vigilant on costs”.
Good luck with that one, Tom.
