Barnes & Noble abruptly fires CEO Demos Parneros with no severance

After little over a year on the job, Demos Parneros was terminated today as CEO of Barnes & Noble. The long-embattled bookseller cited unspecified “policy violations” but noted that Parneros’s firing wasn’t related to financial irregularities or fraud, according to the Wall Street Journal. Parneros won’t receive severance pay and has been booted from his board seat as well.

Sales have been down recently at the bookseller, whose fortunes haven’t exactly looked sunny for many years. Parneros was appointed in April 2017 to lead a turnaround of the company, geared around toys, games, and gifts—but not necessarily books. On an earnings call last month, as Bloomberg reported, Parneros reminded investors that “Turnaround plans take time. And while our performance has been somewhat disappointing, we began to make steady progress in fiscal 2018.”

While the company’s stock has suffered lately, compounded by the Supreme Court’s recent ruling allowing states to collect sales tax on e-commerce transactions, it sounds like Parneros got canned for other reasons. We’ll update this post should further information emerge on which “policy violations” led to the exec’s ouster.