Pay cuts come to Condé Nast, the glossy publisher of Vogue and Vanity Fair
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Those earning US$100,000 or more will have their salaries reduced by 10 per cent to 20 per cent.
PHOTO: CONDE NAST/FACEBOOK
NEW YORK (NYTIMES) - Condé Nast, the most glittering of all the glossy magazine publishers, is the latest media casualty of the coronavirus pandemic.
On Monday (April 13) morning, the publisher of Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and Architectural Digest sent a memo to its 6,000 employees around the world from its chief executive, Roger Lynch, outlining pay cuts for high earners and reduced hours for other employees.
The memo said the company also planned to seek government assistance in Britain and the European Union.
"It's very likely our advertising clients, consumers, and therefore our company, will be operating under significant financial pressure for some time," Mr Lynch said in the note. "As a result, we'll need to go beyond the initial cost-savings measures we put in place to protect our business for the long term."
Those earning US$100,000 (S$142,000) or more - approximately just under half the company - will have their salaries reduced by 10 per cent to 20 per cent for five months, starting in May.
Executives in the senior management team, which includes Anna Wintour, the artistic director of the company and its best-known figurehead, will have their pay cut by 20 per cent. Mr Lynch said he would forgo half of his salary.
Board members who are not employees of Advance Publications (the holding company that owns Condé Nast), like Mr Domenico De Sole, former chief executive of Gucci Group, will also have a 50 per cent reduction in their compensation.
Mr Lynch said he also expected some layoffs but did not specify how many.
Those decisions are expected in May. In the meantime, the company has frozen hiring on hundreds of open positions.
The memo said the company also planned to seek government assistance for employees in Britain and the European Union, where it would also move to implement three- or four-day workweeks for some employees.
The publisher plans to take advantage of the "partial activity" assistance programmes in those regions that will make up lost salary for employees who have been furloughed or had their hours cut.
In 2019 the company united its U.S. and international arms, which include 11 owned and operated titles, into a single entity. The company has operations in France, Italy, Germany and Spain, as well as Asia, although half of its employees are based in the United States.
