News makers:
09 Apr 2001
12 April 2001
STAR India restructures operations
After Zee; Star India is reshuffling its top management.
In the new set-up, Sameer Nair, senior executive vice-president (programming) will head a new division called "content and communication," in addition to which he will also look after marketing of the programmes.
Vikram Sakuja, executive vice-president, marketing, ex-Coke, is to be part of Nair's team.
Jagdish Kumar, executive vice president, corporate will be part of the Star's DTH team headed by Altaf Ali.
LS Nayak, executive vice-president, will take care of advertising and sales across the whole network.
Shankar Narayan, CFO, STAR will take on additional responsibility of HR, legal and accounting while Kaushal Dalal will be in charge of business development.
Sumantro Dutta, executive vice president (advertisement & sales) Star Plus will move to the newly formed radio division of Star. Star India recently started a division to offer marketing and sales services to private FM radio players.
Peter Mukherjea, CEO, Star India confirmed the moves.
Changes in senior management at MSN
Seattle: Among the changes in senior management portfolios announced at Microsoft last Thursday, perhaps the most significant is that of Brad Chase. The man, who steered the launch of Microsoft's popular Windows 95 operating system, will step down as senior vice-president in charge of MSN's technology and operations.
Spokesman Matt Pilla said the change was not made public when the company announced a series of other executive shifts in its MSN division last week. Chase made his decision about the same time as those staffing changes were announced.
Microsoft's consumer-oriented MSN division includes the company's popular Web sites, browsers, Hotmail e-mail and instant messenger system.
Among the changes announced last Thursday, group vice president Bob Muglia was put in charge of the Personal Services Group, a division for creating subscription-based premium services for .NET that includes parts of MSN.
Microsoft vice president Yusuf Mehdi was put in charge of the MSN and Personal Services Business Group, responsible for network programming, business development and sales and marketing of MSN's software service efforts.
10 April 2001
Management changes at TTK Prestige
New Delhi: Mr. TT Jagannathan, who was chairman and managing director of TTK Prestige, has decided to step down from the post of managing director. His post will be taken by Mr. S Ravichandran, with effect from April 5.
Prior to the present assignment Mr. Ravinchandran was joint managing director.
TTK Prestige said it had also appointed R Rajagopalachari, an independent professional director, as an independent director and chairman of the Audit Committee.
9 April 2001
Montek shortlisted as IMF evaluator
New Delhi: Montek Singh Ahluwalia, member of planning commission, is among the six international candidates shortlisted for the post of an external evaluator at the International Monetary Fund.
The final selection will be decided by a vote shortly.
The post of an external evaluator along with a full-fledged independent evaluation office not manned by the Fund staff was first mooted by the IMF's international monetary and finance committee comprising 24 finance ministers from around the world, including the Indian finance minister.
The committee thought it was necessary to create an independent evaluators office in order to monitor the functioning of the IMF.
The committee is scheduled to meet again at the end of April after which the final candidate will be selected.
The post of an external evaluator is at par with that of an IMF senior director. It comes with an annual pay packet (tax free) of $200,000 (approximately Rs 93 lakh), which if adjusted for US tax rates could be valued at close to $350,000 per annum. The assignment will come with tenure of four years.
