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Friday, September 10, 2010

David Montgomery to make ‘planned retirement’ from Mecom

David Montgomery, chief executive of the pan-European newspaper group Mecom, has bowed to shareholder pressure to leave the company he founded a decade ago. Montgomery said that the move was a "planned retirement" and that he would leave when Mecom reports its pre-close trading statement in January. It emerged Thursday that Aviva Investors, Legal & General and Invesco, which collectively own more than 50 percent of Mecom's shares, were seeking to replace Montgomery and introduce a new business strategy. The board rejected the plan, which included installing Patrick Tillieux, a former senior executive at broadcasters SBS and ProSiebenSat.1, as chief executive. Montgomery said that he still has the "complete confidence" of the Mecom board but had nevertheless decided to stand down "following pressure from certain shareholders". Montgomery, the former chief executive of Mirror Group, founded Mecom in 2000 and expanded into a number of continental European countries through a series of acquisitions. However, in the past couple of years the company, which still owns newspapers in countries including the Netherlands, Denmark and Poland, has struggled with a combination of the downturn and getting to grips with a debt pile that in April last year stood at GBP 500m. Mecom moved to deal with its debt problem by selling off its German and north-west Norwegian businesses, cutting more than 1,000 staff and raising GBP 140m in extra funding from shareholders. In January last year Montgomery survived a board revolt thanks to the backing of shareholders, although six directors resigned. learly "for publication". (The Guardian)

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Press Releases

Join EJC & top media thinkers at PICNIC 2010

On 23 September, world class media thinkers including Jeff Jarvis, Rafat Ali, Mark Glaser and Paul Bradshaw, will join EJC for a day of debates on the future of journalism at PICNIC 2010.

Held in Amsterdam every year, PICNIC is a renowned festival-cum-conference that blurs the lines between creativity, science, technology, business and society. Attracting a wide audience, from government leaders and heads of business to scientists and innovators, the aim is to explore new solutions in the spirit of co-creation.

Covering the successes and failures of recent years in the media industry, as well as the growth of public engagement, EJC’s exclusive one-day PICNIC 2010 programme will focus on the real need to reconstruct journalism and its relationship with the citizen and society.

Posted on August 11, 2010 by EJC
Filed under events.

Press Freedom 2.0: pluralism and participation

The Press Freedom Consortium, a new collaboration of five Dutch development organisations that support press freedom worldwide, has finalised and submitted its final programme application this Thursday to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague, in the context of the ‘Co-Financing System II’ (MFSII).

The proposal, entitled Press Freedom 2.0, aims to alleviate structural poverty by enhancing media quality, improving democratic processes and strengthening women, children and minorities by giving them a voice.

Posted on July 1, 2010 by EJC
Filed under announcements.

EJC launches GoogleWatch to monitor global conversations about Google

We’ve had our eye on Google since the beginning.

We now bring you GoogleWatch, a stand-alone platform that enables a deeper look at the global conversation about Google.

Posted on May 20, 2010 by EJC
Filed under work.

Press Freedom 2.0 moves forward

The Dutch Ministry of Development Co-operation has encouraged Press Freedom 2.0, a collaboration of five organisations including the EJC, to persist with its plan to strengthen press freedom worldwide.

The Press Freedom 2.0 project will address challenges to media and journalism in a development context. The project will focus on 13 developing countries over five years as part of the wider goals of the Dutch foreign ministry in reducing global poverty.

Posted on April 12, 2010 by EJC
Filed under projects.

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