Random House announced this morning that Richard Sarnoff, the head of the company’s corporate development team, has had all his responsibilities shifted over to running Bertelsmann Digital Media Investments, an in-house technology venture fund he’d been running part-time for the last month. Although Sarnoff—the great-nephew of legendary RCA chair David Sarnoff—will still be an executive VP at Random, many of his daily responsibilities will be assumed by Andrew Weber, the senior VP for operations and technology. In a memo circulated within the company, CEO Peter Olson says Weber will work closely with Sarnoff “to strengthen and extend our current corporate digital and online strategies as well as take the lead in the development of our digital future.”
Sarnoff was also involved in formulating Random’s corporate development strategy; that mission has been reassigned to CFO Edward Volini.