Mike Marchesano Moves to JEGI

Just about two weeks after leaving The Nielsen Company, JEGI and Mike Marchesano announced that Marchesano was joining JEGI as a managing director. Kudos to both Marchesano and JEGI.

When Mike was first moved from CEO of VNU Business Media to CTO, a corporate position, I wrote about it in min’s b2b, and received some flack for my treatment of the matter from VNU PR people. They took exception to the way I saw the situation. I still stand by that reading (see the original article here, and the response by VNU PR here). And now, almost a year later, we at min were proven to have been correct, and the situation is reversed: Marchesano is leaving Nielsen for greener pastures. As I saw it, Marchesano wasn’t the kind of executive to be leading cost-cutting and efficiency initiatives. His pedigree is running businesses: BPA, Bill Communications. And, with that deep knowledge of how things get done from the top down, he should be a good fit at JEGI.

So, Kudos to Marchesano for leaving a situation that wasn’t best suited for him, and kudos to JEGI for picking up another player in the industry who will probably add to the impressive number of deals JEGI has compiled in the past 18 months.