Rona Fairhead to step down as chair of the BBC Trust

(Reuters) - Rona Fairhead is to step down as chair of the BBC Trust and will not take part in the new appointment process for a new four year term as chair, according to a statement by Fairhead on BBC Trust's Twitter account on Tuesday. Fairhead, who was former boss of the Financial Times Group, was asked to reapply for the job by new Prime Minister Theresa May after she had previously been told by former Prime Minister David Cameron that she would stay in it. In May, the BBC faced a governance overhaul that included scrapping of the BBC Trust with a new board of up to 14 people and the appointment of communications watchdog Ofcom as the external regulator. Fairhead said the prime minister "strongly encouraged" her to take part in the new process, but she has decided not to re-enter it and that it would be better for the government to appoint someone new. The BBC Trust oversees the publicly funded British broadcaster. (Reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan in Bengaluru; editing by Diane Craft)