Bowing out: Rene Olivieri

The head of one of Oxford's largest publishing companies has decided to retire at 54, following its £572m takeover by a US rival.

Rene Olivieri was chief executive of Blackwell Publishing for 20 years and in February transferred to new owners Wiley as chief operating officer.

He said: "I have not found it easy to adapt to a different role. With a young family I have also been reluctant to travel extensively, which I think is essential for Wiley Blackwell, especially during this critical formative period."

He added: "It's a different world. I had 20 years as chief executive, and I felt I had been there and done that, on my own terms, and I didn't feel I wanted to do it again, so I have decided to do something different."

"I was used to working as chief executive of a private company and now I am not chief executive and it's not a private company any more. I think I got spoilt, doing things my own way. It's fairly typical experience."

He said he was highly optimistic about the future of Wiley-Backwell. "We probably have more people in Oxford in scientific and scholarly publishing than in any other Wiley site. I think it's provided new opportunities for people in the former Blackwell's.

"If you look at Oxford, we are probably employing as many people as we were before. The whole merger was planned not as a way of picking out costs, but as a platform for expansion, and there has been investment in many areas."

He will now concentrate on his role in the Tubney Charitable Trust, founded after the death of Miles Blackwell, as well as gardening, horse riding and music.

Blackwell-Wiley employs about 600 people at the Oxford Business Park, Cowley.

Owned by the Blackwell family, Blackwell Publishing was an entirely separate company from the bookshops and library business, with its own shareholders and management.

Before the takeover, it was the world's largest privately-owned, independent, academic publishing company.

It publishes books and journals for academics and researchers. Most of its journals are published for societies, from the International Association of Bioethics and the Linnean Society to the European Association of Social Anthropologists.

Blackwell, which traces its history back to a 12sq ft bookshop opened in 1879 in Broad Street, Oxford, has two businesses - publishing and retailing.

The bookshops and library business, which have their headquarters at Beaver House in Hythe Bridge Street, were not included in the sale.

3:53pm Friday 19th October 2007

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