By Lilly Vitorovich
LONDON--Rona Fairhead, chief executive officer and chairman of
the Financial Times newspaper, is to quit her job, becoming the
second executive at publisher Pearson PLC to resign in just under
two months.
Fairhead, 51, who had been at Pearson for more than a decade,
will step down from the board at the company's annual shareholder
meeting in April, the company said Tuesday.
The announcement follows news last month that Pearson's
long-serving Chief Executive Officer Marjorie Scardino will leave
the company at the end of the year.
"The leadership transition at Pearson makes this a natural
moment for me to make a change," Ms. Fairhead said in a statement.
"I will miss Pearson deeply but will cheer from the sidelines as
its new leadership team develops and evolves Pearson's successful
strategy and culture."
Fairhead joined Pearson in October 2001, and was appointed chief
financial officer in June 2002. She became CEO of the Financial
Times Group in 2006.
Ms. Scardino said Ms. Fairhead has been "at the heart of
Pearson's development and progress" for just over a decade. "She
has been an exceptional executive and colleague and, while we
regret her decision to go, we respect her desire for a new
challenge," she said.
News of Ms. Scardino's resignation early last month fueled
long-running speculation that a sale of the Financial Times
newspaper and Penguin Group books could be in the cards. Both units
fall outside the company's core educational publishing
business.
A few weeks later, Pearson agreed to combine Penguin with
Bertelsmann AG's Random House, a merger that created the largest
book publisher in the U.K. and the U.S.
A Pearson spokesman said speculation about a sale of the FT
newspaper is unfounded. CEO-designate John Fallon visited the FT
offices last week and "made it clear that the FT is not for sale,"
the spokesman said.
Analysts had suspected that the change at the top could lead
other senior executives at Pearson to leave, including Ms.
Fairhead, Penguin CEO John Makinson and Will Ethridge, who runs the
company's vast education operations in the U.S.
"They might all have wanted the top slot and could potentially
leave," Investec Securities' Steve Liechti said in a note to
investors at the time.
Write to Lilly Vitorovich at lilly.vitorovich@dowjones.com