EU antitrust regulators have approved a merger of two publishers, Penguin and Random House, the BBC reports. The resulting publisher, Penguin Random House, will be the largest in the world.
The European Commission concluded that the merged company will not infringe on the rights of authors and will not sell books exclusively in English.
Pearson and Bertelsmann, which own Penguin and Random House respectively, expect the transaction to be completed in the second half of 2013. Bertelsmann will own 53% of the new publisher, while Pearson will hold 47%.
The combined company is expected to be headquartered in New York. The US Department of Justice has already approved the deal.
Pearson is a British publishing house and has a solid reputation in the education sector. Pearson has divisions such as Pearson North America (online education, publishing and related services), Penguin Group (publishing business) and Financial Times Group (business media, including the Financial Times).
Bertelsmann is a German media group founded in 1835. It publishes fiction, science, reference, educational and other literature. The majority of the shares are owned by the Bertelsmann Foundation (77.6%). Since July 1, 2011 the Bertelsmann group consists of the publishing business Random House, the publishing house Gruner + Jahr (print media), the RTL Group (RTL television channel of the same name) and the Arvato AG division