The following is a preview of part of my Warr Zone page for November 27 (in The Alchemist at http://ChemWeb.com). Bertelsmann A.G. signed a 1 billion German mark ($597 million) deal on November 20, to buy an 82 percent stake in Springer-Verlag G.m.b.H., Germanys largest publisher of scientific journals and technical books. The acquisition will allow Bertelsmann to make new inroads into the United States market. Almost 25 percent of Springers annual revenues of 615 million marks comes from the United States. More than 60 percent of the company's publications are in English. The acquisition, which is subject to approval by European regulators, is part of an aggressive push by Bertelsmann to become a dominant player in science and technical publishing - a market that is expected to grow faster than consumer or popular books in the next few years. Bertelsmann took over Random House earlier this year and in October struck a deal with Barnes & Noble to participate in a joint venture in the chains online bookstore. Part of the appeal of Springer was Springer LINK, the electronic network, which offers more than 400 technical and medical journals. Bertelsmann has an expanding infrastructure of Internet investments, from its electronic bookstores in the United States and Europe to its interest in the search engine Lycos and the on-line service, America Online. It believes that its own strength on the Internet can add something important to Springer. The latter is expected to increase its sales of scientific and technical books through Barnes & Nobles electronic bookstore, placing additional pressures on Amazon.com. It is claimed that, using the information highway, which is built for mass consumer markets, Bertelsmann can deliver scientific, technical and medical contents for incremental costs. The professional and scientific publishing market is being consolidated: to compete requires a lot of capital and resources. Springer, a privately owned, independent company, had a profit margin of about 10 percent. The new majority owners expect a future return on sales of 15 percent to 20 percent. The new chairman to head the supervisory board of Springer, Jürgen Richter, is the former chairman of Axel Springer, a Berlin-based newspaper conglomerate which has no connection with Springer-Verlag. -- Dr Wendy A Warr Wendy Warr & Associates, 6 Berwick Court Holmes Chapel, Cheshire CW4 7HZ, England Tel/fax +44 (0)1477 533837 wendy@warr.com http://www.warr.com chemweb: A list for Chemical Applications of the Internet. To post to list: mailto:chemweb@ic.ac.uk Archived as: http://www.lists.ic.ac.uk/hypermail/chemweb/ To (un)subscribe, mailto:majordomo@ic.ac.uk the following message; (un)subscribe chemweb List coordinator, Henry Rzepa (mailto:rzepa@ic.ac.uk)