Waterstone's Snapshot
Waterstone's customers find the company as refreshing as a cool drink of water. A leading bookseller in the UK, Waterstone's operates about 295 storefronts on high streets and at university campuses across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. It also has stores in Belgium and Amsterdam, as well as an e-commerce site. The company's flagship, on London's Piccadilly Street, is the largest bookshop in Europe and has floors dedicated to fiction, children's literature, and academic subjects, among other genres. Strapped by competition from the e-book industry and online retailers, entertainment giant HMV sold Waterstone's to A&NN Group, a fund controlled by Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut, in 2011.