p18-22,24-26,28-31 Euro50 NovDec09v3 9/11/09 14:39 Page 20
Euro 50 > Leaders in broadband and pay-TV Digital TV Europe
November/December 2009
Mike Fries CEO, Liberty Global Neil Gaydon CEO, Pace
Liberty has continued to drive digital uptake in board. That helped. A strong balance sheet
key markets under Mike Fries’s leadership. and cash position also lowered the stress level.
Age 46 Last year’s most surprising development
I was pretty certain some of our weaker com-
Education MBA, Columbia University; BA, petitors would struggle to survive. Wrong.
Wesleyan University Surprisingly, many of them became even more
irrational – e.g. in Romania. Wireless broad-
Career path Joined the cable industry about band also captured our attention (and a few of
20 years ago as the fifth employee of what our customers’). Watch that space.
has become, today, Liberty Global.
Goals for the next year Continued growth
Job description CEO of the world’s largest from the penetration of digital TV, voice and
international cable company. broadband. In at least two markets we’ll go Neil Gaydon has led set-top venfor Pace to its
live with a comprehensive mobile product. most successful year, delivering record half-
Highlights from the last year Despite the And we’ll keep working to clarify and strength- year revenues of £526.5m (€577.3m).
turmoil, we delivered steady growth through en cable’s position among European regula-
the first three quarters of the year. We tors. Age 49
demonstrated, again, that while our industry is
not immune to recession, we have some pret- Likely breakthrough service or technology Career path I’ve been at Pace for 14 years,
ty strong antibodies. Our greatest accomplish- In my opinion, DOCSIS 3.0 has already broken becoming CEO in 2006. In my time at the
ment was launching 100Mbps-plus broadband through. We’re excited about two new things company I have been worldwide sales and
speeds across Europe. We also started re- in particular – our next generation digital TV marketing director, as well as president of
engineering our relationship with commercial platform and the opportunities in online video, Pace Americas.
broadcasters who are extremely important to in particular “authentication” and the ability to
the future of our digital TV platforms. deliver great cable programming to web users.
Lessons learned from the downturn Don’t Favourite TV character Larry David, from Erik Huggers director of
forget what you learned during the last down- Curb Your Enthusiasm.
BBC Future Media & Technology
turn. Fortunately, we lowered our cost struc-
ture during 2007-2008 and went into the Life outside work With my kids. Also golfing,
cycle with increasing margins across the surfing, skiing, running, music with the band. The BBC continues to be at the forefront of
new media innovation.
Age 36 years
Education Avans University, Netherlands.
Career path I started at the BBC as group
controller, future Media & Technology, hav-
ing joined in May 2007. I joined the BBC
from Microsoft, where I worked across vari-
ous digital media initiatives.
Job description Responsible for the BBC’s
output delivered via internet, interactive TV
and mobile services, helping audiences
enjoy a seamless experience of BBC pro-
grammes and services, wherever they are. I
also hold responsibility for managing the
BBC’s broadcast and enterprise technolo-
gies, information and archives.
Visit us at at www.digitaltveurope.net
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