Hachette Livre CEO replaced

Long-time Hachette Livre CEO Arnaud Nourry has been replaced by Pierre Leroy, co-managing partner of Hachette’s parent company Lagardère.

Nourry, who had run Hachette since 2003, was replaced on Monday, 29 March, with the Bookseller reporting ‘speculation suggesting that he was at odds with parent company Lagardère’s efforts to divest itself of parts of its publishing wing’ and ‘a new rumour emerging that he could have been planning his own management buyout’. Publishing Perspectives writes that news of Nourry’s departure ‘is tied to the narrative of an impending corporate takeover—and Nourry’s publicly stated resistance to a breakup of Hachette in the process’.

According to several French news outlets, French media company Vivendi, which already owns France’s second largest publisher Editis, is interested in purchasing Hachette Livre, with Nourry publicly opposing the plan in the past.

New CEO Leroy, in a letter sent to all Hachette Livre employees and seen by the Bookseller, said, ‘On that matter, let me state unambiguously in my dual capacity as chairman and chief executive officer of Hachette Livre and co-managing partner of the Lagardère group, that our project is clear: the continued development of Hachette Livre in France and throughout the world, in books and in the other diverse areas we have been branching into in recent years. It is the only project. It is aligned with the long-term future of the Lagardère group, and beyond that, with our responsibility as guardians of this exceptional heritage.’

Category: International news