Michael Huseby, president and former cfo of Barnes & Noble Inc. (New York), has been promoted to ceo.
Huseby joined the book retailer in 2012 after a career in the cable industry, including a stint as cfo of Cablevision Systems Corp. (Oyster Bay, N.Y.).
The move is being seen as an affirmation of Barnes & Noble’s shift to digital books. Founder and chairman Leonard Riggio has fought for the retention of the company’s physical stores selling physical books, even going so far as to offer to buy the book chain of more than 670 stores from the company. (He dropped those plans last year.)
Huseby’s career has been interspersed with players in the digital arena. He served as cfo of Charter Communications Inc. (Stamford, Conn.), and still sits on the board. Charter has Liberty Media Corp. (Englewood, Colo.) as its largest shareholder. In 2011, Liberty made a $1 billion buyout bid for Barnes & Noble before settling for a 17 percent stake and two seats on the board.
Nonetheless, Barnes & Noble’s retail book segment is not expected to disappear. “The store business is still extremely profitable,” John Tinker, an analyst at Maxim Group (New York), told Bloomberg News. “It is a melting iceberg, but so far it’s been melting very slowly.”