Todd Larsen has resigned as president of Dow Jones & Co., says a company press release. Larsen was touted as a potential replacement for Les Hinton, who resigned as CEO of Dow Jones last July, saying he wasn’t aware of the phone-hacking that went on when he was executive chairman of News International, which like Dow Jones is owned by News Corp. “That I was ignorant of what apparently happened is irrelevant and in the circumstances I feel it is proper for me to resign from News Corp, and apologize to those hurt by the actions of the News of the World,” Hinton wrote in his resignation letter. Hinton resigned the same day Rebekah Brooks resigned the top spot at News International.
Larsen enjoyed a special status within the company’s upper reaches at the time: He’d been there more than a decade, so he wasn’t an outsider, nor was he a Murdoch crony. “Larsen came to News Corp. under its previous ownership from Booz Allen Hamilton, and his distance from the scandal could make him a safe bet,” Lucia Moses wrote in an article about who might replace Hinton.
Dow Jones appointed Lex Fenwick to the role in February. Fenwick used to run Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Ventures, both entities arguably an even safer corporate distance from the phone-hacking scandal.
