Shares in Future slump as boss announces plan to quit

The American boss of Future, the listed British publishing house, has announced that he is quitting to return to the United States just 18 months after taking the top job.Jon Steinberg, 47, received a relocation fee of up to £260,000 to help with the cost of moving from New York to London with his wife and two children when he was appointed in April 2023.
He has now informed the board that he and his family want to move back to the United States next year. It is understood that the family hopes to move to Florida. Steinberg has a 12-month notice period, so could potentially stay until next autumn, although Future has already begun the search for his replacement.The surprise news of Steinberg’s departure sent shares in the company, whose magazines and websites range from Country Life and Marie Claire to The Week and Metal Hammer, down by almost a fifth.Jessica Pok, a media industry analyst at Peel Hunt, the investment bank, said his exit would “cast a shadow over the investment case until a successor is found”.A graduate of Princeton University, Steinberg worked for Google and Buzzfeed before becoming chief executive of the Daily Mail’s north American business. He founded Cheddar, a millennial-focused financial news network, in 2016, selling the business to Patrick Drahi’s Altice USA for $200 million three years later.Steinberg was brought in by Future to replace Zillah Bing-Thorne, who spent almost a decade at the company and oversaw its audacious £594 million takeover of GoCompare, the price comparison website.
He was seen as pivotal in driving a “growth acceleration strategy” (GAS), under which Future added new ways of monetising content and closed less popular titles, including Total 911 and 3D World. The strategy won praise from industry analysts and the group’s most recent trading update showed that it returned to organic revenue growth in the summer.
Steinberg is widely seen as having done a decent job in his short time at Future, having guided the group through the post-lockdown normalisation in audience numbers and a slowdown in advertising spending amid an increasingly uncertain geopolitical and economic outlook.
Given the wider industry headwinds, however, the share price has not reflected that progress. On his first day, the stock was trading at £11.18. The shares closed at 794½p — down 189½p, or 19.2 per cent — following news of his exit.
Richard Huntingford, Future’s chairman, said: “I would like to thank Jon for the significant contribution he has made to the group. Whilst we are disappointed that he will be departing next year, we respect Jon’s decision to return to the US.”
Steinberg said: “Future is a wonderful business driven forward by incredibly talented people who I love working with, and it was a tough personal decision to step down from the board next year.”
Pok said: “The news comes as a surprise. The company has finally made a turn for the better, moving into organic growth, with audience trends stabilising and an experienced new chief financial officer, Sharjeel Suleman, now on board. While Steinberg is to remain during his notice period to oversee the final stage of GAS, his departure is undoubtedly disappointing.”