Mark Suwyn, executive chairman, will serve as interim CEO until NewPage names a replacement. Suwyn previously served as the company’s chief executive between April 2006 and March of last year, according to a prospectus filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission last month.
Willett, president, CEO and director since March 2009, will remain with NewPage until March 31 as a consultant, according to news release. After that, he will work for Cerebus Operations as a consultant for two years. Cerberus Capital Partners bought NewPage in 2005 for $2.3 billion from MeadWestvaco.
“After considerable personal reflection on my longer-term career interests, I have made the difficult decision to leave NewPage to pursue opportunities in other industries,” Willett said in a statement.
Suwyn, 67, said he and Willett “really have turned the company in a different direction” during the past four years. Going forward, the company will pay down debt with an eye toward a possible initial public offering, drive down expenses and expand sales, Suwyn said. It has no plans to make acquisitions or undertake other big initiatives, Suwyn said.
This prompted Willett, whose skills lay in business turnarounds and growing start-up firms, to question whether he wanted to stay with NewPage or look elsewhere, Suwyn said.
Economic pressure on the magazine and catalogue publishing sectors — key customers of NewPage — has cut into NewPage’s sales and pricing since 2008. In November, for example, NewPage reported its third-quarter sales dropped 30 percent to $791 million from $1.13 billion during the same period a year ago.
Suwyn said the coated paper sector, which relies heavily on the advertising industry’s fortunes, has begun to see some improvement as industries such as automotive manufacturers are again seeing the value in advertising their products.
The company has paper mills in Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Nova Scotia, Canada. The company reported sales of $4.4 billion in 2008.
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