Gennaro Castaldo Watch: Shuffling the marketing departments

HMV is merging the marketing departments for Waterstones and HMV. Because, frankly, selling books is almost identical to running a youth club, right?

Still, Gennaro Castaldo is keen to calm down fears this might be an 'efficiency' measure:

Gennaro Castaldo, spokesperson for HMV, said: “I'm pleased to say this is not about cuts or job losses - it's about finding a better way of working together as brands to achieve synergies and to make the most of the resources available to us.

“There are potentially a couple of vacancies or new positions, while one role may go, so there are more or less just as many heads supporting both brands as there were before - just under 50 in total.”

Mmm. Brand synergies. And, you know, if someone loses their job, well, that's only more or less screwing up their lives. More or less.