Barnes & Noble CEO Resigns Amid Executive Shakeup

Barnes & Noble Inc (NYSE:BKS) Chief Executive Officer William Lynch has resigned effective immediately, the U.S. bookstore chain said on Monday.

The news came just weeks after the company reported another quarter of dismal results, led by a 34 percent drop in sales of Nook devices and e-books business, and said it expected sales to continue to decline this fiscal year at its bookstores.

While the retailer did not give a specific reason for Lynch's exit, the company had originally brought him in to build its struggling Nook business.

Last month, Barnes & Noble said it will stop manufacturing its own Nook tablets, marking the end of its expensive attempt to compete alone with deep-pocketed rivals Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) , Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) and Google Inc (NASDAQ:GOOG) in the tablet wars.

Also on Monday, the company promoted Allen Lindstrom as its financial chief. It named Michael Huseby as the chief executive of its Nook Media unit and president of the parent company. It also promoted Kanuj Malhotra to CFO of the Nook unit.

Its shares fell 2.6 percent to $17.20 in after-market trading on Monday.

(Reporting By Dhanya Skariachan; Editing by Carol Bishopric and Leslie Gevirtz)