Bailey: another high profile move
For once the rumour mill was right -"Trinity Mirror’s next chief executive will be a woman" was the whisper last week and this week Sly Bailey was appointed.
Bailey, 40, currently chief executive of IPC Media, will take up her role on 3 February. She replaces Philip Graf who announced on 24 September his intention to stand down.
Trinity Mirror employs more than 12,000 staff and is the biggest newspaper publisher in the UK with 250 national and regional titles. Bailey will be used to heading a big company – IPC Media is the largest consumer magazine publisher in the UK, selling more than 350 million copies of its magazines a year.
"The chief executive role at Trinity Mirror is one of the key positions in UK media," she said.
" Trinity Mirror is an ambitious and successful company with strong businesses, a clear growth strategy and enormous opportunities for further development.
"I’m absolutely thrilled at the prospect of leading the country’s biggest newspaper publisher and I look forward to building on the strength of some of the most powerful brands in national and regional newspapers."
Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan said: "This is very good news. She’s going to be a breath of fresh air. She is young, she is dynamic and it’s good to have such a woman running a company of this size.
"Whenever I have met Sly in the past we have always had a good laugh. She has a good sense of humour and she is obviously a good businesswoman. She is just what we need."
Bailey began her career in 1984 as a sales executive with The Guardian, moving to The Independent in 1987 as advertisement sales manager, before joining IPC in 1989. After holding a number of senior commercial roles with the company, she was appointed to the IPC Magazines board in 1994, aged 31, the youngest board member of IPC.
In 1997, she became managing director of the company’s television magazines division, IPC tx, and the following year was part of the board team that undertook the management buyout of IPC from Reed Elsevier, backed by venture capitalist Cinven, for £860m.
In December 1999, she was appointed chief executive of the entire business.
Bailey later led discussions with AOL Time Warner which resulted in the sale of IPC to Time Inc, the publishing division of AOL Time Warner, for £1.15bn.
Bailey was named the 10th most influential woman in Britain by Business Age in 2001 and the FT’s Creative Business placed her as one of the top 50 creative people. She was recently awarded the PPA Marcus Morris award for outstanding contribution to the publishing industry.
By Jean Morgan
Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog
