Barnes & Noble Exploring Borders Purchase
Barnes & Noble, the world’s largest bookseller, is exploring the idea of buying their competitor Borders Group. This comes after a tough year for Borders, which declared bankruptcy earlier and had their stock delisted on NYSE.
There has been previous rumors of Borders acquiring Barnes & Noble with the help of investors, but so far those rumors have been unfounded.
According to this post on thebookseller.com, a B&N takeover of Borders could pose antitrust issues:
Barnes & Noble, the US’ largest book chain by sales, has assembled a team of executives and advisers to study the possibility of acquiring the number two chain Borders, according to a person familiar with the situation, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Whether such a deal would pass antitrust hurdles is unclear. Barnes & Noble has about 20% to 22% of the retail book market, while Borders controls 10% to 12%, estimates Albert Greco, a professor at the Fordham Graduate School of Business.
I’m not sure what the benefit would be if B&N did go through with this. Borders has no real digital infrastructure, they’re closing a good chunk of stores they’d have to jump through a bunch of antitrust hoops. It doesn’t seem worth it.
I’d rather see B&N spend that money investing more in their own digital strategy and beefing up their current stores.
