PUBLISHER Reed Elsevier has begun the search to find a successor for chief executive Sir Crispin Davis, who is planning to step down next year.

Headhunter Anna Mann has been appointed to consider internal and external candidates.

By the time he leaves, Davis, who turns 60 in March, will have been in charge at Reed for almost a decade.

He has transformed the company since joining from Aegis. Previously, the Anglo-Dutch company had been run by co-chairmen, a legacy of the merger that created it in 1993.

Insiders say Andrew Prozes, the New York-based boss of legal information provider Lexis Nexis, is a strong candidate to replace Davis. However, at 62 his age may count against him.

Finance director Mark Armour and Erik Engstrom, the 44-year-old Swede at the helm of science and medical division Elsevier, are also highly regarded.

Davis led Reed’s heavy internet investment that heralded a shift from journals to online databases. More than 50% of its income comes from the internet today.

However, Reed, with a market value of £12 billion, is still in flux. In February, it announced the £2.1 billion acquisition of Choice Point, a US group that collates personal data and analyses risk for insurers.

The company is also in the process of selling its business-publishing arm, which owns New Scientist and Variety magazines, to reduce its exposure to cyclical advertising.

An information memorandum was sent out by adviser UBS last week. Reed could raise more than £1 billion, but the division may need to be broken up along geographical lines to suit buyers. The company is providing a debt package to encourage interest.

That sale comes a year after Reed exited education publishing, which had held back group growth prospects because schools were going online more slowly than law firms and hospitals.

Davis has ambitions to be a FTSE 100 chairman and already has a seat on the board of the drug giant Glaxo Smith Kline.

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