Barnes & Noble has paid Pearson $27.7 million in cash and stock to buy back its stake in the company’s Nook e-reader business, giving the bookseller chain full control over the Nook once again. The deal comes almost 3 weeks after Microsoft sold back its stake in the Nook business for a $185 million loss. The success of those transactions means that Barnes & Noble can now go ahead with its plans of spinning the Nook out into a separate public company.
Barnes & Noble said on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement to buy back Pearson’s stake in the booksellers’s struggling e-book business, Nook Media, for nearly $28 million. The company said that it would pay $13.75 million in cash and 602,927 shares of Barnes & Noble’s common stock. The move follows an exit by Microsoft from Nook earlier this month. Barnes & Noble bought out the software giant’s stake for about $120 million. In December 2012, Pearson, the British education and publishing company and owner of The Financial Times, had followed Microsoft’s lead in investing in the Nook, taking a 5 percent for $89.5 million after Microsoft had acquired 16.8 percent stake for $300 million. Barnes & Noble said in a statement on Tuesday that the transaction would strengthen its balance sheet ” and further simplify the corporate structure by giving the company ownership (through its subsidiaries) of 100 percent of Nook Media.”