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MARSHALL FIRED AT VCG
January 19, 1999
Sheldon Marshall has been replaced as Chief Executive of Visual Communications Group
by Andrew Nugee. VCG is the still image marketing subsidiary of United News and
Media headquartered in the UK.
Sources tell us that VCG's return on investment in 1998 was poor compared with
expectations. The European part of the operation was the weakest and one company in
the group lost money. FPG, the U.S. agency that is part of VCG, had the strongest
returns of any agency in the group.
Another factor that probably contributed to the firing of Marshall was length of time
it has taken FPG and VCG web sites in place in order to compete with the other two
major players in the industry - Getty Images and The Image Bank. FPG's site which was
launched in October had a number of initial flaws which we pointed out in
Story 177.
Marshall had run the company for the last 15 years and built it into one of the top
three businesses in the stock photography industry.
Nugee has been Managing Director of FT Media and Telecoms for the past two years and
prior to that worked for the Boston Consulting Group in London and Munich and at the
Economist Intelligence Unit.
Charles Gregson, Executive Director responsible for Visual Communications Group
said: "I am delighted that Andrew will be taking over responsibility for Visual
Communications Group, an important component of United's growing web-based and
technology-oriented portfolio. He brings to the company a wealth of experience,
which will help it take advantage of the exciting opportunities presented by digital
technology and the Internet.
Andrew Nugee said: "I am tremendously pleased to be joining VCG at such an exciting
point in its development. VCG's strong brands and wealth of content provide a
robust base to take it onto the Internet and achieve the very tangible efficiency
and distribution benefits offered by this revolutionary medium."