A trio of senior executives at regional publisher Newsquest are leaving the company in the latest management shake-up.
Vic Catanach, managing director for the North London division, recently oversaw a wide-ranging restructure of the group’s titles in the home counties that saw 16 weeklies placed under a single editor.
Now he too is leaving the business after 13 years, along with two other senior executives.
Also departing is Gavin Steacy, regional managing director for Wales, Gloucestershire and the South Midlands, who is retiring after nine years with the company, and Frank McCaffrey, managing director of Exchange & Mart, who leaves after 24 years.
Mike Harper will take over from Vic as managing director, North London and Essex, while Exchange & Mart will now come under Ewan Stark, managing director of Scottish-based online recruitment platform S1.
Meanwhile Gavin’s role will be split with Julia Lancett becoming managing director for Wales and Gloucestershire, and Trevor Sallis named MD of the Midlands South division, which will now include Herefordshire.
Both Julia and Trevor will report directly to group chief executive Henry Faure Walker, pictured, who announced the changes in a staff memo that has been seen by HoldtheFrontPage.
Said Henry: “I would like to thank Vic, Frank and Gavin for their contribution to the direction and management of their respective businesses and they leave us with our best wishes for their future endeavours.
“I am sure you will join me in wishing Julia, Trevor, Ewan and Mike every success with their new remits and responsibilities.”
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They seemed to have culled most of the shop floor staff and there are only the execs left to save some money on the payroll. What next in the industry?
Sixteen weeklies under one editor is a joke. But then so is the industry at present. Let’s home some sanity and stability returns soon.
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Same old same old. Newsquest’s answer to its future: 1 slash the wage bill, and 2, er there is no 2.
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Er, I don’t like to see anyone losing their job but there’s hardly a rush to make a comment here. I wonder why that is.
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Trying very hard to work up some feeling of sympathy, but failing. Thanks for the pay freezes, the years when you didn’t even have the courtesy to tell us we weren’t getting an increase on our paltry wages, oh and thanks also for the unpaid furloughs.
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The boot’s on the other foot now.
Not nice, is it chaps?
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Don’t be too sympathetic folks. NQ ‘top brass’ will no doubt be leaving with a nice ‘little’ leaving remuneration.
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Wonder what the pay offs were?
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@Grassroots. That was my first thought too. Hope it wasn’t more than a week for every year.
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You can’t half wondering whether the furloughs were a waste of time, you took them to save redundancies but they still made people redundant…..any guilt felt?
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Still a little overburdened on the MD front in these parts, if you ask me.
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It took me a year to find another job and I found a dream one with modest independent paper free of big company bull and bluster.
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Sorry I thought it said ‘Gavin and Stacey’
Ironic that one of those affected oversaw the recent restructure, I’ll bet this wasn’t in his plan, hoist by his own petard maybe?
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Hoist by someone else’s petard, Employee x, who themselves may be sitting on one. Tricky blighters, these petards.
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