Ian Smith has resigned as CEO of Reed Elsevier, the Anglo-Dutch publishing group, just eight months after taking over the role

Smith will be replaced with immediate effect by Erik Engstrom, CEO of Elsevier, the group’s Dutch arm.
His resignation is a ‘mutual agreement’, the company said in a statement.
´Ian has had the difficult task of leading Reed Elsevier during unprecedentedly turbulent economic times. The boards and I would like to thank him for his contribution in this respect and wish him well for the future,´ group chairman Anthony Habgood said.
The Financial Times Lex column said Reed’s former chairman, Jan Hommen, who is now at ING, and the rest of the Reed board must ‘take the blame for placing their bets on a relatively untested outsider at a time of massive upheaval in the publishing industry’.
The paper points out Smith is a former management consultant whose biggest role before Reed Elsevier was a six-month stint as head of house-building firm Taylor Woodrow.
.