US Edition Mr Habgood, a former executive director at Boston Consulting and Total, will step down as chairman of Bunzl and non-executive director of SVG Capital, but remain as chairman of Whitbread.
Reed Elsevier has so far been relatively resilient to the downturn hitting the media industry, but this morning warned that its business-to-business publishing division was likely to see profits fall substantially this year.
The group was forced to abandon the proposed sale of its publishing division Reed Business Information (RBI) last year, after no buyer could be found. It has now embarked on a programme of cost-cutting at RBI, as the division's reliance on advertising for half of its revenue has left it exposed to the cyclical downturn.
Subscriptions to LexisNexis, the legal information database, and Reed Exhibitions, particularly in the retail and property sector, have also been affected by pressure on corporate budgets.
However, the ChoicePoint business acquired in the US last year is seeing strong growth in insurance data services and subscriptions are likely to remain at a 98pc renewal rate in key science and technology operations.
"We expect revenue growth to slow in both science and legal, but do not expect it to turn negative," said Lorna Tilbian, an analyst at Numis Securities. "Although we expect exhibitions and RBI to show some cyclicality, we believe this is manageable in the context of a group of Reed's scale and diversity and expect it to be offset by the ChoicePoint acquisition and group restructuring programmes."
Reed Elsevier is currently undertaking a restructuring programme to deliver $205m (£140m) of savings this year, rising to $350m by 2011. Since January, Reed Elsevier has issued $2.8bn of debt to help pay down debt from the ChoicePoint acquisition and extended its credit facilities until 2012.