MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
June 1-15, 2005 Edition
Time Warner
CEO Kirshbaum
to Leave Post
NEW YORK, NY/05/17/05—Laurence J. Kirshbaum, CEO of the Time Warner Book Group, said Monday, May 16, that he is leaving the company at the end of the year, most likely to become a literary agent.
He will be succeeded by David Young, current chairman and CEO of Time Warner Book Group, UK. The publisher of the U.K. division, Ursula Mackenzie, will fill Young’s post.
Time Inc. executive vice president and CFO Richard Atkinson said Kirshbaum’s departure is entirely his own decision.
After 30 years with Warner, Kirshbaum, age 61, said he wants to work more closely with authors without the pressures of running a large company. Since he joined the company as a marketing executive for Warner Paperback Library in 1974, revenues have grown from $5 million to a record $500 million this year. Kirshbaum has published a number of bestsellers, including Blink, by Malcolm Gladwell, and America (The Book), by Jon Stewart.
He became president of Warner Books in 1984 and was promoted to chairman of the Time Warner Book Group in 1996.
