In Brief
Lisa Gersh’s Departure From Martha Stewart Living “Driven By Company’s Expansion Beyond Her Sweet Spot”
4:45 pm, December 19th | by Sarah Devlin
Today in CEO shakeups: Lisa Gersh, who was named the CEO of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia in May 2012, is stepping down after a lackluster third quarter, in which the company “lost $50.9 million, compared with a loss of $9.7 million a year earlier.” Ouch. Those kinds of numbers would be enough to encourage a change in management, but there is another factor that may have contributed to Gersh’s departure from the company.
Martha Stewart’s Overzealous New Exec Celebrates with Bahamas Booze-Bash
4:47 pm, June 2nd | by Hillary Reinsberg
Are Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and its soon-to-be CEO overconfident about the company’s future? After a lavish fiesta in the Bahamas over Memorial Day Weekend in celebration of Lisa Gersh’s appointment as COO at the company, a position which is poised to turn into CEO in a year or two’s time, the new exec seems curiously breezy about the difficulty she’s bound to face.
After years of diminishing stock prices, the company finally hired the revered Blackstone group to advise the company. Following this appointment, stock prices did shoot up and have stayed up, but that was only a week ago. Yes, the stock has been up above $5 a share, which sounds good after some low points below $2. But it’s hardly back to 2005 levels, when it rose above $35 a share.
In other words, we’re not sure it’s time to be partying yet.
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