Dow Jones Names New CEO
Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal, named chief operating officer Richard Zannino on Tuesday to become its new CEO, replacing Peter Kann, who will remain as chairman until 2007.
The company also announced that Kann's wife, Karen Elliot House, will retire from the company by mutual agreement. House, like Kann, had a long career as a journalist at the Journal and was most recently its publisher.
Zannino joined Dow Jones in 2001 as its chief financial officer, and currently oversees the company's day-to-day operations as chief operating officer, reporting to Kann. He will take over the CEO duties effective Feb. 1, the company said in a statement.
Zannino had been considered a leading candidate to succeed Kann, whose stewardship of the company had been marred by several difficulties, including the ill-fated purchase of a financial data supplier, Telerate, and five years of declining advertising volume at the Journal.
Gordon Crovitz, the head of electronic publishing at Dow Jones, had also been seen as a contender for the CEO job, and House's name had also been mentioned.
The company also announced Tuesday that it now expected to report higher fourth-quarter results than it had previously forecast because of better results at the Journal and its electronic publishing businesses.
Dow Jones said it expects to earn about 40 cents per share before one-time items, compared with its prior estimate in the low to mid-30 cents per share range.
Kann was facing mandatory retirement from Dow Jones under company rules by the end of 2007, the year in which he turns 65. He is currently 63 years old; Zannino is 47, and House is 58.
Dow Jones has suffered more than other newspaper publishers from an industrywide slowdown in advertising, blaming the prolonged slump in the Journal's heavy reliance on financial and technology advertising.
The paper has been trying to diversify its ad mix by adding new sections and a Saturday edition with more coverage of consumer affairs, leisure pursuits and personal finance.
Before coming to Dow Jones, Zannino had held various finance and strategy positions at other companies including Liz Claiborne Inc., General Signal Corp. and Saks Holdings Inc.
In addition to the Journal, Dow Jones also publishes Dow Jones Newswires, several major market indicators including the Dow Jones industrial average, the weekly Barron's and a group of community newspapers.