Times Online Appoints Former FT.com Head As New Digital Head

The online arm of Times UK (owned by News Corp), which was lacking a business leader for almost a year now after Annelies van den Belt left and joined as new media director at the Telegraph Group, has found someone: Times Online has appointed former FT.com COO Zach Leonard to the new role of digital media publisher. Leonard will oversee the commercial development of the Times Online website, including mobile phone downloads and podcasts.

He will work alongside the Times Online editorial director, Peter Bale, and report to Paul Hayes, the managing director of Times Newspapers. Bale has done a good job over the last year or so expanding the site with blogs, podcasts and others tie-ups like with Audible.

Leonard has jumped around in a few jobs in the last 2-3 years: prior to this he was at Accenture, where he ran the British publishing practice. Before that he joined UK’s Wi-Fi wholesaler The Cloud as COO.

He was the COO of FT.com for a long time and later promoted as FT’s EMEA managing director. He was also the founder and CEO of FTMarketWatch.com (the doomed FT and MarketWatch joint venture).

I’ll be meeting both Zach and Peter Bale at the OPA Global Forum in another two weeks, in London, and will have an interview with them about the strategies going ahead.

The UK/Europe section is sponsored by OPA ’06 London

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