Jovanovich Plans to Join Rival Publisher

Macmillan-McGraw-Hill said it hired Peter Jovanovich, 43, to succeed the retiring Richard T. Morgan as its president and chief executive of its Macmillan-McGraw-Hill School Publishing Co., the nation’s biggest schoolbook publisher.

Morgan, 55, had announced in February that he would step down in May for personal reasons.

Jovanovich is quitting Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, the Orlando, Fla.-based publishing and insurance concern that was acquired for $1.5 billion last fall by General Cinema Corp. of Newton, Mass.

Jovanovich had been president and chief executive at HBJ since January, 1990, and helped engineer the sale of the heavily indebted company to General Cinema. HBJ took on a crushing debt in 1987, while Jovanovich’s father, William, was running the company, to avoid being acquired by British publisher Robert Maxwell.

Ironically, the younger Jovanovich is going to work for a company that is half-owned by Macmillan Inc., the company that Maxwell bought after being spurned by HBJ.