As Time Inc. searches for a new chief executive, it is simultaneously trying to find candidates for a new board of directors as it spins off from Time Warner.
“It’s a parallel process,” said one source.
Speculation is building that one of the future board seats will go to a legacy player from the past, and former editor-in-chief Norman Pearlstine’s name has been prominently mentioned.
That “legacy list” also includes former Time CEO Don Logan, now an owner of the Birmingham Barons, a White Sox Double-A farm team; current head of the Aspen Institute and author of the best-selling Steve Jobs biography Walter Isaacson, who earlier ran Time magazine and, briefly, CNN; and another former Time Inc. editor-in-chief, John Huey, now finishing up a fellowship at Harvard.
Pearstine told On the Money: “I don’t think I could do it if I was asked. Being in an editorial position [at Bloomberg], I’d be barred from doing anything at a publicly traded company.”
Logan, who is a current board member of Time Warner Cable, said he’s heard nothing, either: “You’d have to ask [Time Warner CEO] Jeff Bewkes and the folks at Time Warner. I don’t know if they’d want someone from their past or all new people.”
Isaacson said, “Nobody has contacted me.” Huey had not returned a call by presstime.–Keith J. Kelly
It is a very good year
Perhaps Time Inc. should read this item.
Frank Sinatra had nothing on Liberty Media’s Greg Maffei, whose nickname should also be “chairman of the board.”
Maffei was appointed — or appointed himself — chairman of Sirius XM last week, in the shake-up after Mel Karmazin took over.
Just a few short weeks ago, Maffei knocked Irving Azoff off the charts as nonexecutive chair at Live Nation.
Maffei also sits on the board of Starz, Trip Advisor, Zillow, Barnes and Noble, Liberty Media and Liberty Interactive.
When Liberty’s takeover of UK TV outfit Virgin Media is complete, he’ll no doubt be warming some British boardrooms as well.—Claire Atkinson
Sculley sez…
There are some opinions that just do not count for much.
CNBC on Thursday broke into its broadcast with a scoop: Former Apple CEO John Sculley told them that he believed Samsung should hire recently fired JCPenney CEO Ron Johnson.
The rationale: Johnson, who had driven JCPenney into a death spiral, had previously run Apple stores and could open Samsung stores.
Samsung is not likely to listen, since it was Sculley who in 1985 forced Apple founder Steve Jobs to resign from the company. The legendary Jobs came back years later to save Apple.–Josh Kosman
A rosé is a rosé
Ben Watts, the photographer and brother of Naomi (pictured), is launching his own wine label, Watts Up Rosé, for summer.
The wine is en route from Rioja, Spain, 7,200 bottles of it. He’s betting it will be big in the Hamptons, especially Montauk, this summer, where restaurants including Navy Beach will sell it. It will also be in Miami.
Watts says it is just rosé for starters, since that is his favorite wine. “If it was a red wine, it would be preposterous because I know nothing about red, but this is a really lovely rosé.”
The wine will be priced at $18 to $22 and sold in packs of three with a handle on the box, so it is easy to carry on the subway — and to the beach
Watts teamed up with Wine Awesomeness, an online wine retailer based in Charleston, SC that launched in September, and will target the fashion crowd. One of the owners is an advanced sommelier, one of 400 in the world.
New Yorkers are a third of the company’s market. —Julie Earle-Levine
Baring’s boy
Nick Leeson, the former derivatives broker blamed for the spectacular collapse of Barings Bank in 1995, may be coming to our town.
His new Irish employer, GDP Partnership, is weighing an invitation to an Irish-American business conference this June in New York. It could become Leeson’s first high-profile international event since he joined GDP last week as an adviser to indebted real-estate investors in Ireland.
“Nick probably won’t speak, but he’d come along,” Conor Devine, a principal at GDP, told On the Money. “We will probably decide in the next few weeks.”
Leeson is a celebrity on the public-speaking circuit — he did jail time in Singapore for the $1.27 billion Barings disaster — and would draw a crowd.
“I’ve faced a number of difficult situations in the past and ultimately seen them turn for the better,” Leeson said. “It is often difficult to see the solution, but rest assured there is always one available.”–John Aidan Byrne