Re: Libraries Urge Justice Departmen to Block Cinven and Candover Purchase of BertelsmannSpringer

[Frederick Friend <ucylfjf@ucl.ac.uk>]

John Cox has not been reading the signs of the times if he believes the
libraries' action to be a "rush to judgement". Members of the academic
community have been concerned for some time about the effect of mergers in
the journal publishing industry. All the new investment is re-couped in
higher prices, and from our perspective, having two "super-powers" is no
big advantage over having one. Behind such concerns there is the
deeply-held feeling that the interests of other "investors" are not taken
into account. Universities are financial investors in the research
reported in the journals. Authors are intellectual investors. Librarians
invest their professional expertise in making the journals accessible. And
the taxpayer invests many millions of every currency you can name in
research funding and purchase of journal content. Not one of these
investors has been asked whether Springer journals will be any better for
the money Cinven and Candover are providing. All of us badly need a new
partnership between the academic community and journal publishers, a
partnership in which all interests are respected.

Fred Friend

----- Original Message -----
From: "John Cox" <John.E.Cox@btinternet.com>
To: "liblicense-l" <liblicense-l@lists.yale.edu>
Sent: Monday, June 02, 2003 12:31 PM
Subject: Libraries Urge Justice Departmen to Block Cinven and Candover
Purchase of BertelsmannSpringer


> This appears to me to be a rush to judgement without any thoughtful
> analysis of the impact of the creation of a group with the resources to
> become a significant competitor to the otherwise sole 'super power' in
> journal publishing.
>
> Cinven and Candover are private equity companies.  Their investment in our
> industry is new money.  It creates a new group that otherwise would have
> been acquired, piece by piece, by existing publishing giants.  I know
> Cinven from their time as principal owner of Routledge, of which I was a
> director in the mid-1990s.  Their stewardship of Routledge was marked by
> financial insight and by allowing the professional publishing management
> simply to get on with the job of publishing books and journals.  They
> offered advice, but they were always willing to listen and be corrected.
> They were a model owner.  And the same individuals are involved with
> Kluwer/Bertelsmann Springer.
>
> The process of concentration in scholarly publishing in the last ten years
> has been incestuous.  Publishers have bought other publishers.  This
> acquisition represents new investment and creates diversity which would
> not exist if one of the other bidders had succeeded.
>
> John Cox
>
> John Cox Associates
> E-mail: John.E.Cox@btinternet.com