German media company Bertelsmann and its UK rival Pearson have appointed a top line up of law firms to represent them in the merger of their respective publishing companies Random House and Penguin.

According to The Lawyer, UK firm  Slaughter and May and US advisor Davis Polk will represent Bertelsmann whilst Freshfields Bruckhaus  Deringer and  US firm Morgan Lewis will advise Pearson.Corporate partner Simon Marchant will head up the Freshfields team whilst Charles Randall leads the Slaughters team.

The deals sees the creation of Penguin Random House, 53 per cent of which will be owned by Bertelsmann and 47 per cent by Pearson.The size of the combined group could see the Competition Authorities take an interest – in the UK alone the market share is said to be around 27 per cent.However, given the dominance of Amazon in digital books, experts said such a move would be contentious.

http://www.thelawyer.com/freshfields-and-slaughters-join-us-trio-on-penguin-random-house-merger/1015252.article