Manuel Sansigre has been named chief financial officer at Penguin Random House, effective January 1, succeeding Jim Thompson, who will retire next year. Divya Sawhney has been promoted to chief strategy officer, effective immediately. The moves were announced in internal memos from PRH CEO Nihar Malaviya, to whom both Sansigre and Sawhney will report.
Sansigre was promoted to deputy CFO and executive v-p of global mergers and acquisitions earlier this year, and will continue to lead the global M&A division at the company. He has been with the company for eight years, and is a member of both the U.S. lead team and the PRH global executive committee.
In his memo about Sansigre's promotion, Malaviya also noted that under his leadership, PRH "will continue to selectively acquire small- and medium-sized companies and intellectual property that complement our existing portfolio and support our growth ambitions."
Sawhney, who has been with the publisher for nearly a decade, was most recently head of global strategy. She will, in her expanded role, "lead the execution of key company-wide initiatives to accelerate organic growth as well as maximize the benefits from company and intellectual property acquisitions," Malaviya wrote. He further noted that, Sawhney's team will "spearhead the creation of new capabilities across all our businesses in response to "global, external developments," citing " generative AI as an example.
Thompson has been with PRH for 33 years. He began his career at the publisher as a financial analyst in the corporate finance group before moving to the Knopf Publishing Group, where he rose to director of business operations. He later returned to corporate finance, where he was named deputy CFO in 2015 and CFO in 2018.
"Throughout his career, Jim has been instrumental in shaping our financial strategies, enabling us to make informed decisions on content acquisitions, sales, and publishing operations," Malaviya wrote. "A trusted advisor to our U.S. and global leadership teams and to Bertelsmann, Jim has always been a reliable, seemingly infinite source of knowledge, in turn providing much-respected and sought-after guidance to our publishers, business managers, and shareholders."
