Guardian Owner Picks Pemsel As New Chief Exec

The owner of The Guardian newspaper is to opt for continuity with the selection of its next chief executive as Andrew Miller prepares to step down after five years at the helm.

Sky News understands that David Pemsel, the Guardian Media Group's (GMG) deputy chief executive, will on Thursday be appointed to the role having seen off competition from an unidentified UK-based Google executive.

Sources said a board meeting was held on Tuesday at which GMG's directors agreed to choose Mr Pemsel as the new boss.

Mr Pemsel will take over at a time of major change for the group, which has just seen Alan Rusbridger hand over the editorship of its flagship newspaper after 20 years.

The Guardian's new editor, Katharine Viner, is a long-standing journalist at the title, ensuring a degree of continuity that will be mirrored in the company's leadership with Mr Pemsel's appointment.

A former marketing director of ITV and advertising executive at St Luke's, one of London's hottest advertising agencies during the late 1990s and early 2000s, Mr Pemsel joined Guardian News & Media in 2011.

GMG has one shareholder, The Scott Trust, which has a mandate to secure the financial and editorial independence of The Guardian in perpetuity.

Last year, the group sold its 50.1% share of Trader Media Group to Apax Partners, the private equity group which subsequently floated the publisher of Auto Trader on the London Stock Exchange.

GMG continues to hold a one-third stake in Top Right Group, which owns the Cannes Lions, the world's leading advertising festival, which will be staged in the South of France next week.

In March, GMG reported that, based on unaudited figures for the year ending March 29, it expected group revenues to rise by 3% to more than £215m, driven primarily by growth in digital revenue.

"Rising digital sales more than offset slowing print newspaper circulation and volatile advertising demand," it said.

Announcing his intention to leave earlier this year, Mr Miller said: "Having achieved our strategy to streamline the Group, secure its financial future and set it on the path to digital success, I have decided that mid-2015 will be the right time for me to explore new opportunities and for a new editor and chief executive to take the company on the next big phase of The Guardian’s digital growth and international expansion.

"My successor will inherit a business with very strong commercial foundations in place."

In a trading update issued in March, Neil Berkett, the former Virgin Media executive who chairs GMG, hailed the "outstanding partnership” between Mr Miller and Mr Rusbridger and said it promised to be “another year of encouraging progress as our business and editorial transformation continues".

GMG declined to comment on the appointment of Mr Miller's successor.