Dame Marjorie Scardino, first FTSE woman executive, quits after 15 years

 
Gideon Spanier3 October 2012

Dame Marjorie Scardino, the first woman chief executive of a FTSE 100 company, resigned today after more than 15 years at the helm of Pearson, the owner of the Financial Times and Penguin Books.

Dame Marjorie, 65, one of the most respected bosses in the City after tripling the size of the business during her reign, said “it felt like the right time for everybody”.

John Fallon, Pearson’s chief executive of international education, will succeed her on January 1.

Her departure will revive speculation that Pearson could sell the Financial Times. Scardino famously said a decade ago that the paper would be sold “over my dead body”.

But Mr Fallon played down such talk, saying: “The FT is a highly valued and very valuable part of Pearson.”

Under Scardino’s leadership, Pearson has changed radically from being a conglomerate with a diverse range of print, entertainment and banking assets into a company focused on digital and services.

She tripled annual sales to £6 billion and profits hit a record high of £942 million last year as she pushed the company into education and fast-growing emerging markets such as China and Brazil. More than two thirds of profits now come from education.

Dame Marjorie said: “I’m most proud of our performance and our culture. That’s what makes this a durable company.”

She has no plans to retire. “I think I’d like to work a bit more and I’ve got a few ideas,” she said, referring to her charitable work for the MacArthur Foundation and Oxfam. She is also a vice-chairman of mobile giant Nokia. Although her departure has been mooted for some time, the news of her resignation still came as a surprise.

Chairman Glen Moreno said he began planning the succession two years ago, adding: “Pearson is a 168-year-old company that has been totally transformed under Marjorie’s leadership.”

City analysts also praised Scardino’s reign. Lorna Tilbian, executive director at broker Numis Securities, said: “She turned a curate’s egg which once owned Lazards, La Tour, Alton Towers and Madame Tussauds into the world’s leading digital educational publisher — not a mean feat in the space of 15 short years.”

Relatively few women have followed Scardino’s lead in the FTSE 100 — there are only five leading top 100 companies.

Scardino, an Anglo-American who was made a d ame in 2002, was chief executive of The Economist Group, owner of the eponymous weekly magazine, before joining Pearson in 1997.

Dame Marjorie leaves fine legacy

Commentary: James Ashton

I've been joshing with Dame Marjorie for a good five years about when she would hang up her mortar board at the world’s largest education company. In the same way that she insisted the Financial Times wasn’t for sale, the FTSE 100’s most-recognisable female boss constructed ever more elaborate rejections of the idea that her time was almost up.

Tony Blair hadn’t even come to power when Scardino broke the mould for women in the boardroom, so long has her tenure been. The scant ranks of blue-chip women she leaves behind shows that the debate she is reluctant to take part in has been amplified, even if the numbers haven’t.

But to consider the Texan’s achievements purely within the realms of her gender would be an insult. The Pearson she took over in 1997 was a sleepy conglomerate that didn’t know what it wanted to be. Scardino cast off investment banking, television, theme parks and even an avocado farm to focus on the Blairite mantra of “education, education, education”.

There were plenty of doubters, especially when she chased expensive, hi-tech acquisitions that investors didn’t understand and Pearson shares took a tumble when the dotcom boom turned to bust.

What emerged is a global, market-leading business headquartered in the Strand that has managed to preserve almost Reithian values. Not a bad legacy to leave behind.

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