Fashioning succession
Speculation is swirling about who might replace Richard “Mad Dog” Beckman at the Condé Nast division that publishes Women’s Wear Daily.
Beckman officially resigned as CEO of Fairchild Fashion Group yesterday to become CEO of the newly formed e5 Global Media — owner of The Hollywood Reporter, Billboard, Adweek and Mediaweek.
The list of inside candidates for his old job is long. Among the names being bandied about are Bill Wackerman, the publishing director who oversees Glamour, Brides and Details; Tom Florio, who runs Vogue, Teen Vogue, Bon Appetit and Condé Nast Traveler; and Edward Menicheschi, vice president/publisher of Vanity Fair.
Some are pegging David Carey, former publisher of the defunct Condé Nast Portfolio, as the frontrunner. Now that Beckman is out of the picture, Carey may have a cleaner run to the top if and when Condé CEO Chuck Townsend ever steps down.
A few years ago, there were four group presidents at Condé Nast. Now there are only Carey and Bob Sauerberg, the group president in charge of consumer marketing for all the magazines. Carey as Publications group president has no direct operating responsibilities and would seem to have the most time on his hands to tackle the new project. His group has become increasingly ill defined. It includes Golf Digest and Wired; Carey also recently assumed oversight of The New Yorker. He got that magazine into the black when he was publisher, but it is now bleeding red ink again.
A year or two whipping Fairchild into shape would re-burnish his credentials after the Portfolio meltdown last year.
The No. 2 people to Beckman, Matt Roberts, senior vice president of marketing, and Lisa Howard, chief revenue officer, have never run a division.
Townsend, who was traveling on the West Coast when Beckman resigned to Chairman S.I. Newhouse Jr. yesterday morning, issued a terse announcement on the move, saying that Beckman had resigned “to pursue an external opportunity.”
“His successor will be named shortly,” the memo said. “We wish Richard success in the next chap ter of his career.”
Meanwhile, back in New York, as part of the new and friendlier Condé Nast, a poster appeared in the lobby inviting employees to win big by coming up with new strategies.
“Chuck Townsend wants to hear your ideas,” it proclaims.
And he’s making it worthwhile. Each quar ter, the top idea will be rewarded with a $10,000 prize.
“That’s real money,” said one insider, trying to come up with an idea.
Of course, employees have already lost the chance to earn 10 grand with this idea: Get rid of Mad Dog in 2010.
Dog’s stake
Jimmy Finkelstein, CEO of News Communications and a principal in Pluribus Capital Management, played a key role in recruiting Beckman to e5 Global Media.
Beckman’s last day at the Condé Nast unit is Friday and he jumps right into the new job on Monday.
“We have a long relationship,” Finkelstein said. “We’ve talked for a long time about doing something together and when we finally got around to discussing it, it turned out he knew Todd Boehly [managing partner in the office of the CEO] at Guggenheim.”
Pluribus teamed up with Guggenheim Partners to buy the media trade titles from Nielsen Business Media for $70 million in December. The wooing had already begun.
While Beckman was reputed to be pulling in close to $2 million a year running Fairchild, he now has an equity stake in the new e5 Global Media.
“Richard will be an equity holder,” Finkelstein said. “He was our only candidate. It took a lot of persuasion, but it’s a perfect match. He understands the DNA of a media company.”
He said e5 is looking to expand the business in every area, from editorial to advertising to the Web. He also did not rule out more acquisitions, but had no specific targets. “We’ll look for acquisitions where appropriate.”
Beckman revealed little about his new plans for e5 yesterday, but said he was not looking when the chance came.
“You can’t control when opportunities knock,” he said. “I loved working at Condé for 24 years, but this will be the first time in my life where I have a chance to build a piece of a company for myself.”
As for targets, he was pretty vague.
“I’m going to grow this business a lot,” he said.
Sea change
David Bradley, the multi-millionaire who owns The Atlantic Media operation, is shuffling the deck after selling his investment research business, Potomac Research Group, to a longtime insider, Suzanne Clark. She was also running the profitable National Journal Group for him at Atlantic Media.
With Clark gone, Justin Smith has been promoted to president of the Atlantic Media Group, which now also includes the National Journal, Congress Daily, The Hotline and Government Executive publications.
The Atlantic Monthly is still losing money, even after it had what Bradley said was the “best year in the 10 years since I’ve owned it.”
He said the National Journal has always been “the rock.”
“The whole company makes money,” he said. “It’s just a matter of making more than the Atlantic loses in a year.”
Combined, the two groups have revenue of around $75 million.
Bradley said the move to promote Smith is “not an efficiency agenda” since the two disparate operations don’t share readers or advertisers. “It’s just that he is an executive who moves faster on decisions and executions than anyone I know.” [email protected]