New PubliGroupe General Management on 1 January 2008: full membership announced
The Board of Directors of PubliGroupe has appointed Mr. Christopher Blackwell (age 40 – British citizen) to the position of Chief Information Officer (CIO). He will take over responsibility for the Information & Communication Technology Department on 1 January 2008 from Mr. Jean-Paul Nicoulin. To ensure a smooth transition, Mr. Nicoulin will remain a member of the Group Management until 30 June 2008, before retiring at the end of 2008. The PubliGroupe General Management, aligned with the new PubliGroupe strategy, is therefore now complete.
Under the responsibility of CEO Hans-Peter Rohner, the full membership of the Group General Management will be as follow on 1 January 2008: Robert Schmidli (Media Sales), Jean-Pascal Michel (Search & Find), Monica Woo (Custom Publishing) and Thomas Kaiser (Digital & Marketing Services). The following heads of central services also belong to the Group General Management: Brigitte Schleipen (Human Resources), Andreas Schmidt (Finance & Controlling), Christopher Blackwell (Information & Communication Technology), Jean-Denis Briod (General Secretariat) and Jean-Paul Nicoulin (until 30 June 2008). As previously announced, Mr. Christian Gartmann will be joining the "Media Sales" management where he will be in charge of the Media Partners Relation & Marketing department; he will therefore be leaving the Group General Management at the end of December 2007.
To satisfy the needs of a rapidly changing advertising market on which information technologies are coming to play an increasingly important role, the mission and structures of the Information & Communication Technology department have been redefined. The CIO will be responsible for development of the PubliGroupe IT strategy and its implementation to the benefit of the Group’s operational units. Christopher Blackwell is perfectly qualified to meet these challenges. He studied economics and business management at the University of St. Gallen and went on to obtain a diploma in Information Technology from the University of Neuchâtel. He then worked for several "IT-Business Consulting" companies where he held several management responsibilities and led several large scale and complex projects. He is currently in charge of the EMEA Consulting Department of Agile Software Corporation which he turned into a profitable and state-of-the-art service organization.
Contact:
Hans-Peter Rohner
CEO
PubliGroupe Ltd.
Tel.: +41 21 317 72 02
hprohner(at)publigroupe.com
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