MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
December 11 – December 18, 2008 Edition
Economic Downturn
Prompts Macmillan
To Freeze Salaries
(Authorlink News, December 11, 2008)–John Sargent, CEO of MacMillan US, parent company for St. Martin’s Press, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Tor and other major imprints, announced in a staff memo December 9 that there would be an across-the-board freeze on the salaries of everyone earning more than $50,000. For those making under $50,000 there will be a pool for modest increases.
The freeze will take place January 1, 2009. “All bonus plans will stay in effect, but all are sensitive to individual profitability and individual performance,” Sargent said.
“Since I spoke to you a month ago about the economic crisis and its impact on our company, I can’t say much has changed,” he wrote. “We are now clearly in a recession and there is still no clarity on how long or deep it will be. What is clear is that retail book sales are down, advertising revenues are down, and even countercyclical businesses like education are struggling in many cases. We are not immune to these forces, and our business continues to be soft. So the time has come to take action for next year.” He said the company would make its usual discretionary contribution to the 4012k plan for 2008 (paid in March 2009).
He said more announcements would come over the next week or two about expense control measures. “. . .I have every confidence that we will be doing as well as the market allows and then some.
