The CEO of Barnes & Noble has been fired for unspecified violations of company policy. CEO Demos Parneros will not be paid severance and will be removed from the board immediately, the bookstore chain said late Tuesday. Barnes & Noble said the board was advised by a law firm in deciding to fire Parneros. The company did not announce a reason for the firing. It said only that the CEO was not let go because of any disagreement about "financial reporting, policies or practices or any potential fraud relating thereto." Related: 5 things Barnes & Noble can do to save itself The company also reaffirmed its profit guidance for the current fiscal year. A spokesperson had no further comment. Barnes & Noble (BKS) said it would begin looking for a new CEO. In the meantime, a leadership group, including the chief financial officer, will handle the CEO's duties. Related: CEO of LaCroix maker sued for unwanted touching Parneros, 56, joined the company as chief operating officer in late 2016 after a career at Staples, the office supply chain. He was named CEO in April 2017. Barnes & Noble operates 630 stores in the United States and has 23,000 employees. It was one of the first traditional retailers to be hurt by the growth of Amazon (AMZN). Sales have declined each of the last five years, and the company has lost money in three of those years.<doc-sep>Barnes & Noble Inc. has fired Chief Executive Demos Parneros, citing company policy violations. The bookseller said Tuesday that Mr. Parneros won’t receive any severance pay and that he is no longer a board member. Barnes & Noble didn’t disclose what rules Mr. Parneros may have violated, but said the decision wasn’t tied to any disagreement over financial reporting or any potential fraud. A group of current executives, including Chief Financial Officer Allen Lindstrom, will share CEO duties on a temporary basis until a replacement to Mr. Parneros is hired, the company said. Executive Chairman Leonard Riggio, who helped build Barnes & Noble into the country’s largest publicly traded bookstore chain, will also be involved in management decisions, the company said. Mr. Riggio is the largest private shareholder. The next chief executive would be Barnes & Noble’s fourth in the last two years. Mr. Parneros didn’t respond to requests for comment. A company representative declined to comment beyond the announcement. The board was advised by the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP, the company said. Mr. Parneros, a longtime retail executive who had previously worked as a president at Staples Inc., joined the retailer in 2016 as operating chief. He was promoted to CEO in April 2017, replacing Mr. Riggio. Barnes & Noble shares, down 20% over the past year, were unchanged in after-hours trading. Mr. Parneros’s departure comes at a difficult juncture for Barnes & Noble, which is struggling to compete with Amazon.com Inc., the country’s largest online seller of physical and digital books. Declining store traffic has been a critical issue for Barnes & Noble, which most recently reported that its same-store sales had declined 4.1% in its fourth quarter ended April 28 and were down 5.4% for the full fiscal year. One publishing executive, who asked not to be identified, said he had been impressed by Mr. Parneros, who he said brought much-need energy to the struggling chain. “He was open, collaborative, and I had the greatest hope for the chain based on what he was bringing. It’s just appalling news.” John Tinker, an analyst with Gabelli & Co., described Mr. Parneros’s departure as “a major surprise” and said it was particularly disappointing because it comes at a time when the bookseller is working on developing a new, smaller store prototype to better compete while reducing costs. Barnes & Noble plans to open five new prototype stores in fiscal 2019, all of which will be smaller than its typical 26,000-square-foot superstores. “They had their nose to the grindstone and were cutting costs,” said Mr. Tinker. “It seemed to me that they had a strategy as to how to manage slow attrition. The fact that there isn’t any severance suggests it wasn’t related to a business-operating decision.” Write to Maria Armental at maria.armental@wsj.com and Jeffrey A. Trachtenberg at jeffrey.trachtenberg@wsj.com<doc-sep>Pedestrians pass in front of a Barnes and Noble Inc. store in New York, Nov. 24, 2013. Barnes & Noble said Tuesday that it has fired CEO Demos Parneros for violating company policies. The company did not specify exactly which policies were violated. It did say, however, that Parneros' termination "is not due to any disagreement with the Company regarding its financial reporting, policies or practices or any potential fraud relating thereto." Parneros will not receive any severance and is no longer a director on its board, the company said in its statement. Barnes & Noble said it fired Parneros under the advice of its law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison. Barnes & Noble said it will begin its search for a new CEO and that it has tapped a group of leaders to run the company in the interim. That group includes chief financial officer Allen Lindstrom, chief merchandising officer Tim Mantel and vice president of stores Carl Hauch.<doc-sep>
Barnes & Noble Inc. said it has fired Chief Executive Demos Parneros for violating company policies and he’ll exit the post without severance. A spokeswoman declined to say why Parneros was terminated. The company said in a statement that it was “not due to any disagreement with the company regarding its financial reporting, policies or practices or any potential fraud.” The bookseller will begin a search for a new CEO. In the meantime, it has appointed a leadership group to share the duties of the office of the CEO until a new leader is named. The group consists of Chief Financial Officer Allen Lindstrom, Chief Merchandising Officer Tim Mantel and Carl Hauch, vice president of stores. Leonard Riggio remains executive chairman. Parneros just wrapped up his first year on the job as CEO this spring. Since he took the helm in April 2017, the stock had fallen more than 30% through Tuesday’s close; in March, it hit its lowest point in about 25 years amid heightened competition from the likes of Amazon.com Inc. Parneros said on the company’s earnings call in June that “turnaround plans take time.” Under his leadership, the company continued to flail, posting a 5.4% drop in same-store sales in the last fiscal year. Parneros originally backed off his predecessors’ quests to boost revenue through sales of gifts and non-book merchandise, then last month said Barnes & Noble would make a renewed effort in toys and games after the shutdown of Toys R Us. His ouster comes less than two years after the August 2016 firing of Barnes & Noble CEO Ron Boire, a former head of Sears Canada. Boire was “not a good fit,” the bookseller said at the time. Riggio, who founded the modern-day version of the company in the 1970s, took over until handing control to Parneros. High-level executives at a slew of consumer companies have been ousted in recent months amid allegations of improper conduct, including leaders at Nike Inc., Lululemon Athletica Inc., Guess Inc. and Tapestry Inc.’s Stuart Weitzman. Barnes & Noble said the board chose to terminate Parneros at the advice of the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, without specifying what prompted the action. Before becoming CEO, Parneros had been chief operating officer since November 2016. Before joining Barnes & Noble, he held several leadership roles at office-supplies giant Staples Inc. UPDATES: 2:55 p.m.: This article was updated with additional background information. This article was originally published at 2:15 p.m.