Arnaud Nourry, Chairman of Hachette Livre and Hachette UK, today announces succession plans at Hachette UK

Tim Hely Hutchinson will retire as CEO of Hachette UK (‘HUK’) at the end of 2017. He will act as a consultant to the Group until the end of 2018.

David Shelley, at present CEO of Little, Brown Book Group (‘L,BBG’) and Orion, will become CEO of HUK from 1^st January 2018. He will also become a member of the International Board of Hachette Livre and a Director of Hachette Book Group (‘HBG’) in the USA at that time. He will join Hachette UK’s Executive Committee as CEO Designate from 1st July this year. He will report to Arnaud Nourry.

Jamie Hodder-Williams, at present CEO of Hodder & Stoughton, John Murray Press, Headline and Quercus, will, in addition to his present responsibilities, become Director of Trade Publishing of HUK from 1^st January 2018. At that time he will join the International Board of Hachette Livre to whom he will have responsibility for  the  Group’s  world rights adult publishing and will also join the Board of Hachette Book Group in the USA.
He will join Hachette UK’s Executive Committee from 1stJuly this year.

Richard Kitson, at present Group Commercial Director of HUK and a member of HUK’s Executive Committee, will become Deputy CEO of Hachette UK from 1^st January 2018.

Lis Tribe, Group Managing Director of Hodder Education and the new President of the Publishers Association, will join the Executive Committee of HUK from 1^st July this year.

Emily-Jane Taylor, at present Finance Director of Little, Brown Book Group and Orion, will become Director of Financial Planning and Analysis of HUK from 1^st January 2018. She will report to Pierre de Cacqueray, Group Finance Director of Hachette UK.

Chris Emerson, Chief Operating Officer of Hachette UK since 2008 and Chair of the International Group of COOs and Pierre de Cacqueray, Group Finance Director of Hachette UK since 2004 complete the Executive Committee of HUK.

On Tim Hely Hutchinson’s retirement:

Arnaud Nourry commented, “I wish Tim had decided to stay for longer but he is famously a planner and he has been working towards a crescendo with great results and superb acquisitions and the move into HUK’s beautiful riverside home at Carmelite House. He has had an amazing career, including the founding of Headline, then Hodder Headline and finally working as my business partner to create and expand Hachette UK. To my mind, his greatest legacy is all the talent he has recruited and developed, including the senior team whose appointments we are announcing today, but also more deeply throughout the company. He has always striven to run a talented and happy house, as well as a successful one, and he has succeeded. I am so glad he is staying with us until the end of 2018 to help the new management and I will be wishing him a very long and happy retirement when the time comes.”

Tim Hely Hutchinson said, “I have been superbly supported by Arnaud, my present and former colleagues and our authors throughout these golden years at Hachette and I could not possibly be more grateful. I know that David and his colleagues will do brilliantly when they take over and I wish them the very best of good fortune. I have always, since my early Macmillan days, loved being part of the publishing world because of its wonderful people and look forward to staying in touch with my author, agent and publishing friends and having time to enjoy my many outside interests with them.”

On the new appointments announced today:

Arnaud Nourry commented, “I have been very fortunate to be able to make all the appointments announced today from within HUK. This next generation of leaders is extraordinarily able: David is an outstanding publisher and he will be an inspiring and inspired CEO, Jamie has first class publishing vision, leadership skills and marketing flair and Richard has an unparalleled knowledge of our print and digital markets in the UK and overseas. Along with Lis, Chris and Pierre, who make up the Executive Committee, the rest of the UK board and the exceptionally gifted group of publishers heading up our publishing divisions, Hachette is in great hands. It is a house brimming with brilliant ideas and creativity at every level. This is a moment to salute the successes of the past and the present and to look forward to a spectacular future.”

David Shelley said: “I feel honoured and humbled to be taking on this role – and incredibly excited, too. I have an immense amount of admiration for Tim: he has created a special and successful publishing Group, of which I have long been proud to be a part. A peerless businessperson, he is also kind, fair and loyal and on both a personal and a professional level I will miss him hugely. He has taught me so much, and I anticipate learning much more from him next year in his role as consultant.

“Tim has built all facets of the business up extremely skilfully and this is a particularly vibrant time for Hachette – as evidenced by some great wins at the Nibbies last week. I am looking forward to working particularly closely with Jamie in his new role, which will be so pivotal for our trade publishing and for Hachette globally, with Lis who has created a dynamic, highly successful educational division, with Richard whose many achievements and skills are reflected in his appointment as Deputy CEO and with Pierre whose wise counsel has served Tim and the rest of the company so well. This couldn’t be a more exciting time in terms of Hachette’s infrastructure: work is well underway on our new warehouse and our new royalties system and I look forward enormously to working with Chris, our outstanding COO, on these and other projects in the future.

“Hachette is unmatched for the sheer range of  its publishing and  I am going to enjoy working closely with Jon Butler, Nick Davies, Katie Espiner, Mari Evans, Alison Goff, Hilary Murray Hill, Charlie King, Carolyn Mays and Oliver Rhodes and the divisions they lead, with the talented and highly successful secondary and primary publishing teams in Hodder Education, with Richard and our overseas companies in Australia, India, Ireland and New Zealand and with Oli Christie and the team at Neon Play.

“Hachette is a fantastic place to work and there are so many brilliant projects that people are engaged in to make this a more inclusive, diverse company. I thoroughly enjoy working with my colleagues across the Group on the many initiatives we have already put in place, and those we plan for the future, to ensure that Hachette continues to be both a really happy place and a business that makes a contribution to society.

“Lastly, I am a voracious reader and have long admired many writers published by other divisions, so it is a particular thrill to know that I will soon get to meet many more of our authors in person.”

Jamie Hodder-Williams said: “Tim has been an inspiration and the driving force behind Hodder Headline and Hachette for so many years. He knows the true value of talent and has built a business packed with creativity, and an incredible array of diverse authors from all around the world, in every category. He has also taught many of us the importance of good quality catering! Thankfully he will still be available to us to provide guidance over the next year, and I am sure beyond that as a friend.

“David is a brilliant appointment for Hachette – a true publisher who sees and creates opportunities both for writers and for the business. I am really looking forward to working with him closely on our strategies and ambitious expansion plans. It’s been thrilling to welcome new colleagues and imprints into the Group over the last few years and we will continue to find ways of building entrepreneurial spirit within our wider structure.

“We have highly creative people in every area of Hachette who work tirelessly to get our authors’ work to millions of readers, and I’m delighted to have new international responsibilities to stimulate our worldwide publishing, and develop even closer collaborations with our colleagues in New York, Paris and around the world.”

Richard Kitson said: “I have been so fortunate to work closely with Tim over the last ten years and I will miss working with him enormously. I cannot thank him enough for the encouragement and support he has given me and for the many good and fun times we have had working – and often travelling – together. David and Jamie are two of my closest colleagues and I could not be more delighted that we will be all working with each other so closely to build on the great work Tim has done to make Hachette the fantastic publishing group it is.”

Further information

Tim Hely Hutchinson has been the CEO of HUK since it was founded in 2004, when Hodder Headline joined Hachette’s Orion, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Octopus, Franklin Watts and Orchard businesses. HUK enjoyed record sales of over £400 million in 2016. Tim helped to negotiate Hachette’s acquisition in 2006 of Time Warner Books, now L,BBG in the UK and HBG in the USA, and has led many further acquisitions since then, including those of Quercus, Rising Stars, Pearson’s overseas educational businesses in the Caribbean and Singapore and, most recently, Neon Play and Bookouture, to build and reconfigure HUK for the markets of today and tomorrow. Before Tim joined Hachette, he was the founder of Headline, which acquired Hodder & Stoughton in 1993 to form Hodder Headline PLC. During the five years when Hodder Headline was owned by WHSmith PLC (‘WHS’), Tim was a member of the main board of WHS and Chairman of WHS News.

David Shelley joined L,BBG in 2005. He became Publisher of L,BBG in 2010. He succeeded Ursula Mackenzie as CEO of L,BBG in 2015 and additionally became CEO of Orion later that year. L,BBG enjoyed another record year in 2016 as its publication of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child became the bestseller of the decade and her Fantastic Beasts became one of the most successful movies of 2016. David leads Changing the Story, HUK’s diversity and inclusion initiative and is a Director of the Publishers Association (‘PA’).

Jamie Hodder-Williams joined Hodder & Stoughton in 1987 as a management trainee. He worked in the Hodder Editorial department before moving to marketing, and became Marketing Director of Hodder & Stoughton in 1994 before being made MD in 2002. He was named CEO of Hodder & Stoughton, John Murray and Headline in 2010, and CEO of Quercus following its acquisition by Hodder & Stoughton in 2014.

Richard Kitson joined Hachette UK as Group Commercial Director in 2006, shortly after Hachette Livre’s acquisition of Time Warner Books, where he held a number of roles including International Sales Director and Deputy Chief Operating Officer. He is Chairman of, and is responsible for, Hachette’s overseas companies including Hachette Australia & New Zealand and Hachette India, which he helped to found in 2008. He is also responsible for HUK’s UK and international sales; its digital, consumer insight and legal and contracts departments and Neon Play

Lis Tribe is Group Managing Director of Hodder Education. Hodder Education is one of the top three providers of curriculum materials to the education market in the UK, and is a market leader in international schools publishing. As well as content, Hodder Education provides a growing range of digital, print and other products and services to teachers and students.  The business includes Rising Stars and Galore Park, publishers for primary and independent school markets, and was the winner of The Bookseller’s Educational Publisher of the Year Award in 2015 and 2016. Lis started her career at Routledge, now part of Taylor and Francis, working in the social sciences  editorial team. She has worked at Hodder Education for 24 years, publishing a variety of subjects and at a number of levels before becoming Publishing Director and then Managing Director in 2012. She was appointed President of the Publishers Association in May 2017.

Emily-Jane Taylor joined Little, Brown Book Group (formerly Time Warner Books) in 2002. Having worked her way up through different positions in the finance department she was promoted to Finance Director of Little, Brown Book Group in 2012. In 2014, Emily-Jane took over additional responsibility for the finance department of Orion Publishing Group and, most recently, became the Finance Director of Bookouture (acquired by Hachette in 2017). She is a Trustee of the Book Trade Charity (BTBS).

Hachette UK is the second largest publishing group in the UK. The group consists of over 50 imprints within different publishing divisions: Hodder & Stoughton; Headline Publishing Group; John Murray Press; Quercus; Little, Brown Book Group; Orion Publishing Group; Bookouture; Octopus Publishing Group; Hachette Children’s Group and Hodder Education publishing books in all formats for all ages and tastes. In 2016, Hachette UK acquired Neon Play, the mobile games studio.  www.hachette.co.uk

The Hachette UK Executive Committee comprises:     

• Arnaud Nourry, Chairman of Hachette Livre and Hachette UK Tim Hely Hutchinson, CEO (until 31 December 2017)
• Pierre de Cacqueray, Group Finance Director Chris Emerson, COO
• Jamie Hodder-Williams, Director of Trade Publishing Richard Kitson, Deputy CEO
• David Shelley, CEO Designate
• Lis Tribe, Group Managing Director Hodder Education

The Hachette UK Board comprises:

The Executive Committee with

• Alison Goff, CEO Octopus Publishing Group
• Clare Harington, Group Communications Director
• Dominic Mahony, Group HR Director
• Hilary Murray Hill, CEO Hachette Children’s Group
• Jane Morpeth, Chair Headline Publishing Group
• Michael Pietsch, CEO Hachette Book Group
• Oliver Rhodes, CEO Bookouture