Only about three months after moving from Ingram to Random House to become executive vice-president, Y.S. Chi has been named president of the company, filling a position that has been vacant since the February departure of Erik Engstrom. In addition to retaining all his former duties, Chi will also be responsible for RH's sales and financial activities, as well as for three publishing divisions.
Chi will continue to report to RH chairman Peter Olson, who said Chi's "number-one priority is to lead us to respond even more rapidly and collaboratively to marketplace change and publishing and technological opportunity." To meet that goal, the two men announced a major realignment of the company's sales and operating divisions. Under the restructuring, RH has combined its sales group with its distribution, production and inventory management operations into a new unit to be called the sales and operations division. Don Weisberg, formerly president of the sales group, has been named president of the newly formed division. Andrew Weber, senior v-p, operations, will now report to Weisberg, while David Naggar, who was named director of the sales group two weeks ago, will continue to work under Weisberg. A RH spokesperson said the formation of the new division will create an integrated supply chain under the direction of one person that will allow the publisher to "respond more efficiently and quickly to the needs of our booksellers." No job cuts are planned.
Weisberg has given up his oversight duties for RH's information, audio and diversified publishing groups. Those groups, as well as RH's children's group, will form a new Random House publishing development group to be headed by Joerg Pfuhl. Pfuhl is currently based in Munich as COO of Random House Continental Europe and Latin America, and will return to New York in September to take up his newly created position. Craig Virden, president of the children's group; Bonnie Ammer, president of the information group; and Jenny Frost, president of the audio group, will report to Pfuhl. Both Pfuhl and Weisberg will report to Chi.
Under the new structure, Olson will continue to oversee the six U.S. publishing groups he has been responsible for since the creation of the new Random House Inc. He will also continue to supervise all of Random's worldwide publishing operations as chairman and CEO of Random House. Random House became the official name for all of Bertelsmann's book publishing operations on April 1.
