The latest news about selling part of Reed Business came in tandem with word that Tad Smith is leaving Reed Business Information-USA. We’ve been told he wasn’t ousted, despite the instant conclusions popping up — that he had decided to leave for a new job. RBI and Reed Elsevier (NYSE: RUK) were evaluating the portfolio at the same time, and the two just happened to coincide. Both global RBI and RE have relatively new CEOs in place — RE CEO Ian Smith as of March, while Global RBI CEO Keith Jones started last year.
What I have learned is that Tad won’t be going to academia, though he has been an adjunct lecturer at the Stern B-school at NYU for a while. He is at RBI until Aug. 31, although he already has been replaced effective immediately with an acting CEO, and already has a job lined up. One intriguing possibility that we ruled out quickly: Forbes. Federated Media, maybe? More as we know it …
Tad Smith was one of a hell of an adjunct teacher, one of the greatest input of all my school years.
Hope he will get back on the fast track.
A great adjunct teacher, but, it would be interesting to learn for the record what he accomplished as the CEO of RBI, arguably one of the world's largest B2B media companies. Smith took over from a predecessor that had been widely criticized for uninspiring strategy, execution and lack of understanding of the importance of digital. Attracting his level of talent was touted by commentators as a success for RE.
Coming in, Smith could have managed that business for profitability and relentlessly taken the costs out to become the low cost producer, but based on the figures that contiue to be reported, the business still has an above industry average cost structure. So, there was a different strategy in play.
Did acquisitions of new businesses, assets and talent feature in that strategy? Was he creating and driving a strategy based around monetizing the company's vast content-producing assets? He appeared to have all the support and funding than necessary to create and execute a successful online strategy. How was that progressing?
Any RBI insiders or commentators care to comment on where the successes have been? Likley there are important lessons here for the rest of B2B.