THE Dundee-based media company, DC Thomson, has appointed a new chief executive of its brightsolid online publishing business, as part of a company re-structure.
Annelies van den Bel joins BSOP from SUP Media, a leading digital publisher in Russia. Meanwhile, Richard Higgs steps up to chief executive of brightsolid online technology.
Says DC Thomson, in a media release: “The appointments [of van den Bel and Higgs] come as DC Thomson plans to split the brightsolid group in to two separate entities as it looks to build its position in the burgeoning genealogy and cloud computing sectors. This means that brightsolid online publishing (BSOP) and brightsolid online technology (BSOT) will now function as autonomous businesses, reporting directly to the DC Thomson board.”
The change also sees Chris van der Kuyl, who currently holds the position of group CEO of brightsolid, taking on a new role as strategic adviser to the DC Thomson board.
Among other things, DC Thomson publishes The Sunday Post and The Courier newspapers.
The release continues: “BSOP owns findmypast.co.uk and genesreunited.co.uk – two of the largest genealogy businesses in Europe – and recently launched in the lucrative US market. The company is a preferred private sector partner to a host of institutions that are digitising and making available online parts of their historical archives, including the Imperial War Museum and The British Library.”
It later continues: “Ms van den Belt joins BSOP from SUP Media, the leading digital publisher in Russia and the CIS which recently merged with Rambler, where she held the position of group chief executive. She has exemplary experience managing online ventures and has previously worked for ITV, Telegraph Media Group and News International.
“While at ITV, Ms van den Belt oversaw the launch of ITV.com and held the title of managing director of ITV Broadband. Prior to this, she was at News International as director of Digital in charge of The Times online site before moving to the Telegraph Media Group as director of New Media. She will formally step into her new role at BSOP next Monday.
“Richard Higgs joined BSOT in 2010 as managing director and has been instrumental in making online technology a dynamic IT business specialising in the architecture and secure cloud delivery of critical infrastructures from its UK-based Tier 3+ data centres.
“Previously, Richard was chief executive of Active Risk Group PLC, a developer of Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) applications which floated in 2005 and served the US and UK markets.”
