Facing the music

摘要

Roger Faxon, chief financial officer of music group EMI, has a somewhat unenviable claim to fame. He reckons he is the only finance director to be appointed on the day his company issued a profits warning. That was in February 2002 and in his two years in the job Faxon has had some tough challenges to face. He was brought in from his previous post as FD of EMI Music Publishing, the division that manages music copyright, by group chairman Eric Nicoli to complete a new-look management team as the business struggled to overcome two failed merger attempts and this, the second of two profits warnings. Faxon's resume couldn't be more different from that of the average FTSE 250 finance director. For one thing, he is an American. Born 55 years ago in Concord, New Hampshire, he read political economy and international affairs at Baltimore's Johns Hopkins University.