People walk in front of the Time Warner Inc. headquarters building at Columbus Circle in New York
Time Warner's headquarters in New York. Reuters

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE:TWX) named Joseph Ripp the next CEO of Time Inc. on Monday as the media giant prepares to split the publishing unit into a separate, publicly traded company.

Ripp is the CEO of OneSource Information Services, a business information provider, but previously served as senior vice president, chief financial officer and treasurer at Time Inc.

“Joe is a seasoned executive who has been immersed in the intersection of digital, advertising and publishing for the past decade,” Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes said in a statement.

Ripp will replaced CEO Laura Lang, who has held the post since January 2012 and said she would not stay on after the magazine unit – which publishes 21 magazines and 25 websites, including Time, Entertainment Weekly and Fortune – was spun off.

In March, Time Warner ended talks with Meredith Corporation (NYSE:MDP) to sell many of Time Inc.’s titles to the women’s magazine publisher when it announced it would refashion Time Inc. into a separate company.

The move came just months before News Corporation (NASDAQ:NWSA) pared off its newspaper and publishing division into another company, leaving its film and television holdings under the new umbrella, 21st Century Fox. Both companies began trading publicly at the end of last month.

Shares in Time Warner were up most than 1 percent to $62.41 by 11:30 a.m. EDT on Monday.