After putting it up for sale this March, the mass media conglomerate ViacomCBS has finally sold its Simon & Schuster book publishing arm, clinching a deal to offload it to Penguin Random House, a book publisher controlled by the German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, for a price of about $2.2 billion.

It’s such that a Simon & Schuster will make Penguin Random House the largest book publisher in the US whereas it’s notably controlled by a German company.

Prior to its just-announced sale, Simon & Schuster had drawn a handful of bidders including the media giant News Corp. ViacomCBS is said to have set a minimum price of $1.2 billion for Simon & Schuster and placed companies in a bidding war that’s now ended at a $2.2 billion price, nearly double the reported minimum.

With Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House is adding a book publisher that brought in revenues of $814 million last year. The publisher’s 1,500 employees will be joining Penguin Random House following the completion of the acquisition.

Photo: ViacomCBS CEO Robert Bakish by Fortune Conferences is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

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