Pearson Cuts 10 Percent of Its Workforce– Including Its CEO
In Pearson’s February 2014 earnings call, CEO John Fallon and and CFO Robin Freestone were clearly counting on the Common Core to garner notable profits from their US education market.
In discussing the US education market, Fallon spoke of “successfully embed[ding] ourselves with our customers”:
…We are choosing exactly this moment to push ahead with the largest restructuring in the history of Pearson… if we can [and as we] successfully embed ourselves with our customers. …what that work does is shift us much more quickly and much more irreversibly to where the biggest sources of future demand are. …we’re… stepping-up our investment in North America, with an extra GBP 60 million ($102 million) in 2013 alone. …We’re doing so to get ahead of the forces reshaping our industry… and to reduce our exposure to the corresponding risks. [Emphasis added.] (Transcript compliments of www.SeekingAlpha.com.)
One of the market analysts in that February 2014 meeting asked about Pearson’s plan if Common Core faltered. Here is what I wrote in May 2014 about that question:
One of the analysts (Whittaker) raises the question of Pearson’s dependence upon 2015 CCSS implementation for future profits. Fallon uses editorials on CCSS as evidence that CCSS will move forward (such sophisticated research, eh?) and comments that before CCSS, “local, stand-alone operating companies” were an impediment to not being able to “scale at anything.” …Whittaker has asked once about an alternate plan of action if CCSS doesn’t work as anticipated. Fallon responded initially that all of CCSS need not work in 2015, just some of CCSS. Whittaker insists upon hearing of Fallon’s alternate plan of action; Fallon offers no substantive alternate plan.
Well. 2015 has come and gone, and so has CFO Robin Freestone, who participated Pearson Cuts 10 Percent of Its Workforce– Including Its CEO | deutsch29: