Malone: I’ll Be CEO for Two Years

Liberty Media Corp. chairman John Malone has a two-year plan.

Malone --who assumed the CEO spot when Robert R. Bennett announced his April 1 retirement earlier this week -- said, “I'd like to see the company go through the transition that it needs to go through on rolling out of what are essentially passive equity positions in other companies and into higher-performing and in some cases, strategic or even fully operational positions,” Reuters reported.

He added, “Once that transition is well under way, I think my usefulness as CEO will have expired.”

In other Liberty news, the company credited its Starz Entertainment Group LLC and QVC Inc. cable networks for helping to lower its second-quarter loss to $107 million, or $0.04 per share, versus $314 million ($0.11) in the year-ago period.

Liberty’s revenue for the second quarter was $2 billion compared with $1.8 billion in the prior-year quarter.

The company said revenue at QVC rose 15%, largely due to apparel and accessories sales, and Starz saw a revenue boost of 8%.