Scardino's way boosts Pearson

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Marjorie Scardino made clear her intentions to take a new broom to Pearson earlier this year when she sold the company's cache of Chateau Latour to Sotheby's.

It marked the departure of the old guard - Frank Barlow and Lord Blakenham, former chief executive and chairman respectively - in May, and the start of an ambitious plan by the 50-year-old Texan to double the media company's value within five years.

Ms Scardino, a mother of three and the only woman to be running a FT- SE 100 company, is as handsomely presented as Pearson's promises for the future. She is credited with engineering the Economist's 78 per cent growth in sales and 130 per cent increase in earnings over the past three and a half years.

The proof of her plan is a long way off, but shares in the company, which publishes the Financial Times, have already jumped 20 per cent.

Yet the legacy she's inherited is a mix of disparate businesses that range from theme parks - including Madame Tussaud's - to Penguin books and part-ownership of the Lazard Brothers investment banks.

"The management is doing the best it can with a difficult deck of cards," says Anthony de Larrinaga, media analyst at Panmure Gordon.

Pearson is too small to take on global competitors with deeper pockets, he says. Its revenue from electronic publishing, at around pounds 135m, is a tenth of the sum Reuters spends each year on research and development in the same field.