M&A Deal Summary

Waterstones Booksellers Acquires Barnes & Noble Booksellers

On June 7, 2019, Waterstones Booksellers acquired retailer Barnes & Noble Booksellers for 683M USD

Acquisition Highlights
  • This is Waterstones Booksellers’ 1st transaction in the Retail sector.
  • This is Waterstones Booksellers’ largest (disclosed) transaction.
  • This is Waterstones Booksellers’ 1st transaction in the United States.
  • This is Waterstones Booksellers’ 1st transaction in New York.

M&A Deal Summary
Date 2019-06-07
Target Barnes & Noble Booksellers
Sector Retail
Buyer(s) Waterstones Booksellers
Deal Type Add-on Acquisition
Deal Value 683M USD
Advisor(s) Evercore Group
Guggenheim Securities (Financial)
Baker Botts
Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison (Legal)

Target

Barnes & Noble Booksellers

New York, New York, United States
Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Inc. is the nation’s largest retail bookseller, and a leading retailer of content, digital media, and educational products. Barnes & Noble operates 627 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 50 states, and one of the Web’s premier e-commerce sites, BN.com (www.bn.com). The Nook Digital business offers a line-up of popular NOOK® tablets and eReaders and an expansive collection of digital reading and entertainment content through the NOOK Store®. The NOOK Store (www.nook.com) features digital books, periodicals, and comics, and offers the ability to enjoy content across a wide array of popular devices through Free NOOK Reading Apps available for Android, iOS®, and Windows.

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Buyer(S) 1

Buyer

Waterstones Booksellers

London, United Kingdom
Category Company
Founded 1982
Sector Retail
DESCRIPTION

Waterstones Booksellers Ltd. is the UK and Ireland’s major high street bookseller with 293 bookshops, including Foyles, Hatchards, Hodges Figgis and branches in Ireland, Brussels and Amsterdam. Waterstones is the only national specialist book retailer of scale in the UK, with the average sized shop carrying a range of around 30,000 individual books and with over 200,000 titles in the largest shop.

DEAL STATS #
Overall 1 of 2
Sector (Retail) 1 of 2
Type (Add-on Acquisition) 1 of 2
State (New York) 1 of 1
Country (United States) 1 of 1
Year (2019) 1 of 1
Size (of disclosed) 1 of 1
FOLLOWING DEAL
DATE TARGET DEAL TYPE VALUE
2022-02-28 Blackwell’s

Oxford, United Kingdom

Blackwell’s is an academic and specialist bookseller also trades online and has a portfolio that comprises eighteen shops, as well as shops in London, Edinburgh, and Manchester, alongside those based on university campuses. Blackwell’s was founded in 1879 and is based in Oxford, United Kingdom.

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Company

Legal