A bitter battle ensued and, after a dramatic board meeting in Melton Mowbray, Mr Cooke and Mr Simmonds resigned.The battle led Mr Arculus to leave He now chairs Emap's deadly rival, IPC. Mr Hand, who had run Emap's consumer business and successfully led the expansion into France, was named Mr Miller's successor.Mr Hand wanted to make his mark quickly with a foreign expansion. He looked at Kerry Packer's Australian magazines business, but balked at the A$1bn (£370m) price-tag. Instead he spent nearly three times that on Petersen in the US.Petersen was a buyout led by Jim Dunning, a publishing entrepreneur with a record for selling at the top of the market Analysts questioned whether Emap had got its timing right It hadn't Within months it was warning on sales.
Shortly after this, Mr Dunning left, complaining about Emap's culture of "committees".Mr Hand sent his long-time deputy at Emap's consumer business, Tom Maloney, to the US to turn the business around. Not only did this not work, it left Emap's most successful division without senior management. Advertising at home suffered.By the beginning of this year, Mr Hand knew something must be done. He considered selling the group's business publishing arm a move that also failed in two ways.
The offers were below what Mr Hand had hoped, and the operation's chief executive, Derek Carter, felt that he was being snubbed, as both his predecessors Tony Tillin and Colin Morrison, had been main board directors, but he was not.The Independent on Sunday has learnt that the decision to drop the business sale and flog the US business was forced on Mr Hand by Mr Miller, who spends most of his time trying not to interfere with his prot?'s decision Despite the red ink, the City welcomed the decision. But some in the industry have their doubts."You sell Petersen and you pull out of the biggest publishing market in the world," said a senior source. "What is left? A domestic business publisher, a consumer business in the UK and France, and a radio operation whose rivals are all issuing profits warnings?"With Mr Hand still at the helm, Emap will find it almost impossible to make acquisitions. Many think its radio operation, whose Kiss FM stations operate in similar areas to Granada TV, could be a target for Granada or arch rival Carlton. But, despite the share price fall, Emap is still valued at over £2bn.When named chief executive, Kevin Hand said: "I tend to be better at building a company than running it." The edifice he built is crumbling Can he talk himself out of this mess?.
