Channel 4 has employed a Chief Financial Officer amidst its 250-staff layoff program.
The community has introduced in Lucy Thomas within the expanded CFO function. Deadline revealed that Finance Director Vince Russell was leaving on the finish of final yr after 5 years.
Reporting to CEO Alex Mahon, Thomas will lead finance throughout the general public broadcaster. She will act as a enterprise companion to Mahon and the chief crew, figuring out business and strategic alternatives and supporting the digital transformation of the enterprise.
She was most just lately Chief Financial & Operating Officer at Bauer Audio, the place she led a business finance crew spanning 9 markets throughout Europe. Prior to this, she spent greater than 20 years at Sky, progressing by means of a variety of Commercial Finance Director and Commercial MD roles earlier than changing into Group Chief Data Officer.
“Lucy has extensive experience of media industry transformation and joins us at a crucial time, as we implement our ambitious strategy to protect our long-term sustainability and become the world’s first public service streamer,” mentioned Mahon. “Lucy is an innovative, data-driven and strategically focused leader, and I have no doubt she will have tremendous impact at Channel 4.”
Lucy Thomas
Thomas will take up her function on April 22, a number of weeks after Channel 4 started implementing its layoffs program. That program is seeing workers numbers decreased by round 16% together with a number of TV commissioners in response to a difficult market.
The community is pairing the layoffs with a Fast Forward blueprint that may quickly see the sale of its 30-year-old Horseferry Road premises alongside three pillars: digital development and transformation, diversifying new enterprise and “reengineering the business for a digital-first world.”
Channel 4 is making the cuts – the deepest because the 2008 world monetary meltdown – in response to a floundering advert market that exhibits little signal of enhancing.