Who Owns Penguin Random House?

The company is the product of a 2013 merger, but its constituent parts date back more than a century. Random House was founded in New York in 1925 by Bennett Cerf and Donald Klopfer, who began by publishing American editions of classic works before expanding into general trade publishing. Bertelsmann acquired Random House in 1998, folding it into the German group's growing media portfolio.

Penguin Books was founded in London in 1935 by Allen Lane, who invented the inexpensive paperback for the mass market. The color-coded covers, orange for fiction and green for crime, became design icons. Penguin merged with Pearson in 1970 and operated as Pearson's consumer publishing arm for four decades, absorbing imprints such as Viking, Putnam, Dutton, and Dorling Kindersley along the way.

By 2012 both parents were looking for scale in response to Amazon's growing power over book pricing and distribution. Bertelsmann and Pearson announced the merger in October 2012, and it closed on July 1, 2013, creating the largest trade publisher in the world with an estimated 25% share of the U.S. consumer book market.

The merged company spent its first decade consolidating. It combined back offices and distribution while keeping editorially independent imprints, a structure that let prestige houses such as Knopf, Viking, and Crown retain their identities. Markus Dohle, who had run Random House since 2008, led the combined company from New York.

The defining event of the modern era was the blocked acquisition of Simon & Schuster. Penguin Random House agreed in November 2020 to buy the rival publisher from ViacomCBS for $2.2 billion. The U.S. Department of Justice sued to stop the deal, and in November 2022 a federal judge ruled it would unlawfully reduce competition for top-selling authors. Penguin Random House abandoned the merger and paid a $200 million termination fee to Paramount Global. Dohle departed weeks later, and Malaviya took over as interim CEO before being named permanent chief executive.

Under Malaviya the company has leaned on data, backlist sales, and audiobook growth. In fiscal 2025 it generated 4.98 billion euros in revenue and 704 million euros in adjusted operating EBITDA, with strong results in the United States and growth in Spanish-language publishing.