Reader’s Digest Asia cuts key staff

• RDA makes staff reductions
• Editor in chief & operations director culled
• Managing director stands down

Regional - Its Asian offices are slowly starting to feel the effect of Reader's Digest's global ‘Recession Plan' which was announced in February, with a couple of key staff reductions in Asia.

As part of the ‘Recession Plan' to reduce approximately 8% of its current global workforce, Reader's Digest Asia has let go both its editor in chief and operations director.

Its managing editors will assume greater responsibility in creating the magazines each month and now report directly to Tom Moore, editorial director Asia Pacific. In addition, the publishing company is looking to strengthen its editorial team in Singapore for the English language edition of Reader's Digest by announcing the appointment of an editor for Reader's Digest Asia in the near future.  

In other staff movements Rosemarie Wallace, managing director Asia, has taken extended leave for personal reasons and will return to the business later in the year in an advisory capacity. Regional president Paul Heath has relocated from Sydney to Singapore and will be acting in that capacity until a replacement can be found.

Additionally Larry Medina, financial controller, has elected to return to the information technology industry, which was the basis of his career prior to joining the company.   According to Heath, job losses at Reader's Digest Asia have been minimal and only a small number of people have been affected.

"There were also other measures to prevent the need for a larger number of lay-offs as have been incurred by many other companies around the world, such as unpaid time off work, suspension of some employee benefits and a number of other cost reducing initiatives," he said.

"We also announced some debt restructuring initiatives to provide us greater financial flexibility in these recessionary times and I am sure you will agree that all these steps are prudent in the current economic environment.

"Our company is excited about the significant growth opportunities in Asia and we are delighted to advise that our business in our two largest markets for our Asia business, being Malaysia and India, are emerging relatively unscathed by the recession, recording strong performance against budget and growth over prior year."

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