Verizon Media Chief To Leave -- WSJ
October 05 2017 - 3:02AM
Dow Jones News
By Ryan Knutson
This article is being republished as part of our daily
reproduction of WSJ.com articles that also appeared in the U.S.
print edition of The Wall Street Journal (October 5, 2017).
Verizon Communications Inc. said its top media executive, Marni
Walden, is leaving in February and her responsibilities will be
split among existing executives at the telecom giant.
Ms. Walden oversees the company's media and digital business,
including its Yahoo and AOL properties, a role she took over in
2015. One of her lieutenants, Tim Armstrong, who runs the Internet
properties, will now report directly to Chief Executive Lowell
McAdam.
Ms. Walden, 50, rose through the ranks of Verizon's wireless
business and was the company's highest-ranking female executive.
She was considered a potential successor to Mr. McAdam.
Her departure comes after it became clear to Ms. Walden that she
was unlikely to become the next CEO, according to one person
familiar with the matter.
"Marni helped build our wireless business, starting as a sales
representative in a store and grew into an inspirational leader and
role model for so many at Verizon," Mr. McAdam said in a statement.
She "will leave us in a strong competitive position."
Ms. Walden was also responsible for Verizon's telematics
business, which connects cars and other devices to the internet.
Those duties will be handed to John Stratton, who is president of
global operations and oversees the company's largest business
units.
Mr. Armstrong, the former CEO of AOL, has been leading the
integration of Yahoo and AOL, after the $4.5 billion deal closed
earlier this year. He laid off about 2,100 of 14,000 people in the
combined workforce under a new division called Oath, whose
properties include HuffPost, TechCrunch and Yahoo Finance.
Just this week, the company disclosed that a massive data breach
at Yahoo before the deal was far more extensive than previously
disclosed, affecting all of Yahoo's 3 billion user accounts. Ms.
Walden was one of the executives who advocated for the Yahoo
purchase, but her departure was unrelated to the hacking
disclosures, the person said.
Ms. Walden has led many of the company's media deals in recent
years. She oversaw the acquisition of Intel Corp.'s internet video
startup, called OnCue, which she helped transform into go90, a
mobile video app. Go90 has yet to gain significant traction.
Mr. McAdam, 63, has made no specific retirement plans. In an
interview with The Wall Street Journal earlier this year, he said,
"I don't plan on working when I'm 65. Life is too short."
Despite Mr. Armstrong's high profile, people inside the company
say the two primary contenders to succeed the longtime CEO are Mr.
Stratton and Hans Vestberg, a former Ericsson CEO who joined
Verizon earlier this year to head up its network operations.
Write to Ryan Knutson at ryan.knutson@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
October 05, 2017 02:47 ET (06:47 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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