Reed Elsevier CFO Departs for Personal Reasons

September 30, 2013

Short honk. I stopped by the LexisNexis booth at the recent intelligence and police conference. I gave two lectures but apparently my topics did not have enough magnetism to “pull” LexisNexis attendees. I rectified the situation by stopping at the LexisNexis booth. I spoke with two LexisNexis professionals. I cut right to the chase. I asked:

How is LexisNexis revenue tracking to the Reed Elsevier plan?

Not surprisingly, the LexisNexis professionals were not able or willing to answer my question. The reason I asked is that I had heard that like a number of other high profile electronic publishing outfits, generating top line revenue growth was getting more and more difficult. Furthermore, delivering a profit to stakeholders and those who “share” in the organization’s profits was requiring quite a bit of ingenuity. I use the word “ingenuity” to refer to McKinsey and Booz Allen-type of cost control.

In my experience, once the easy costs have been trimmed, costs have an odd way of continuing to go up.

After my booth conversation, I saw the news story “Reed Elsevier CFO Resigns.” I assume that the information is correct, but even the rumor of a high level resignation catches my attention. The story reported:

Reed Elsevier PLC said Wednesday its Chief Financial Officer Duncan Palmer has resigned just over a year into the role, citing unspecified family circumstances.

The $16 billion outfit will plug the gap in the C suite. But my question is, “When will the company get back on the growth track, generate services which are “must have”, and have sufficient funds to train booth staff?

In my talk, I mentioned mostly free and advertising supported sources of information. Budgets, despite popular perceptions about intelligence and police entities, are tight. Some of the LexisNexis services are, in my view, very expensive. Using lower cost options makes good fiscal sense. The new Reed Elsevier CFO may find that one business factor difficult to ameliorate.

Stephen E Arnold, September 30, 2013

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under Financial, News, Publishing

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.