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Future appoints former ITN chief executive to run UK wing

By Oliver Luft

Former ITN chief executive Mark Wood has been appointed as the chief executive of the UK wing of special interest magazine publisher Future.

Wood will resign his post as a non-executive director of Future to take up his new role next week.

His appointment follows an announcement in May that Robert Price was to leave his post as the head of Future’s UK business to become managing director of Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment in the UK.

Stevie Spring, Future’s group chief executive, said: “Mark’s outstanding track record in the media bridges both the commercial and the editorial and he has a wealth of experience: in broadcast, print and online.

“Content creation and curation is at the heart of Future’s business and Mark is one of the UK’s most experienced and talented leaders of content-focused companies.”

Wood was chief executive of ITN from 2003 to 2009 after joining from Reuters, which he worked as a journalist before rising to become editor-in-chief. He also served on the Reuters board overseeing strategic media alliances and investments.

Since leaving ITN Wood has been involved in a number of digital start-ups and has been advising two national newspaper groups on internet and iPad strategies.

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He said: “I relish the opportunity to play a bigger part in the achievement of the company’s objectives in a rapidly changing media market. I’m looking forward very much to leading the UK team through the next phase of its development.”

Wood’s appointment comes as Future, like other magazine publishers, has been suffering at the hands of the recession.

In May, Future reported a year-on-year fall in revenue of seven per cent over the six months to the end of March.

Revenue fell to £71.4m in the half-year to March from the £76.6m the company made in the same period the previous year.

The company’s US business made a pre-deductions loss of £400,000, improving on the £1.3m it lost in the same period in 2009, as the UK business made pre-deductions profit of £6.1m – down from £7.4m in the same period the previous year.

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