Contract terminated

From the Guardian:

Reed Business Information is to make 18 staff redundant as part of a restructuring that will include the closure of 130-year old Contract Journal.

This follows the pattern of death by a thousand cuts for RBI.

 

Whisky? Check. Loaded revolver? Check.

Just when you thought that RBI were getting dull again, up pops this from Press Gazette:

Ian Smith, the chief executive of business publisher Reed Elsevier, has resigned with immediate effect after little more than eight months in the post.

Reed Elsevier announced that Smith resigned “with mutual agreement” and has stepped down today from the company’s board.

Elsevier chief executive Erik Engstrom has been appointed as his replacement.

A company spokesman told Reuters that Smith had been the wrong man for the current economic climate.  “Ian and the board decided it wasn’t the right role for him in the current economic circumstances… There is no disagreement on strategy.” [my emphasis]

I love it when everyone agrees about everything, don’t you?

Bit by bit by bit

According to the FT Reed Elsevier has sold another division of Reed Business Information.

My old mate Crispin Davis’s stated aim at the start of last year’s wonderful divestment pantomime was to find a buyer for the whole shebang; his successor seems to be in the process of getting rid of small pieces at a time in the hope that no one outside of Quadrant House will notice.