The German group Bertelsmann has sold BERTELSMANNSPRINGER (turnover of 731 million Euros in 2002, with a staff of 5,000), its "professional press" division, to private equity firms CANDOVER and CINVEN for 1.05 billion Euros. Active in 16 countries, BERTELSMANNSPRINGER publishes over 700 specialist magazine titles and over 4,000 books a year. CANDOVER and CINVEN will merge the company with KAP-KLUWER ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS, the publishing house they acquired in January for 600 million Euros. Renamed SPRINGER, the new company will be the world's number two publisher in the field of science, technology and medicine behind ELSEVIER SCIENCE, with an annual turnover of 880 million Euros. BERTELSMANN is also said to be in talks with AOL TIME WARNER with a view to collaboration between their music divisions, BMG (turnover of 2.7 billion Euros in 2002) and WARNER (turnover of 4.2 billion dollars in 2002) respectively. This collaboration would take the form of an equally-divided joint venture.