Trinity Mirror poaches Sly Bailey from IPC for chief executive job

Trinity Mirror has landed Sly Bailey, one of Britain's most high profile media businesswomen, as its new chief executive.

The surprise appointment of 40-year-old Ms Bailey, currently chief executive of IPC, the magazines group, sparked speculation of a shake-up at Trinity's national newspapers, the Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror and Sunday People. Some analysts have suggested the company should exit the nationals, to focus on its huge stable of regional and local papers. Trinity's national strategy has seen it launch into a much-criticised price war with its main rival The Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch.

However, Sir Victor Blank, Trinity's chairman, seemed to rule out radical changes in the current plan for the nationals, which was announced earlier this year. "At the moment, I don't believe a sale or demerger [of the Mirror titles] is the way forward. We will do better as we are but, if things change, we'd look at it again."

The appointment of Ms Bailey is likely to lead to the departure from the Trinity board of Joe Sinyor. Since Philip Graf announced in September that he is to step down as group chief executive, Mr Sinyor, who is chief executive of newspapers at Trinity, had been in the race for the top job.

Ms Bailey's pay deal at Trinity will be worth up to £1.2m a year, plus share options worth some £2m. She is regarded as a very determined and hard-working individual, who understands consumers well. At IPC she has not held back from taking difficult decisions, including closing titles, such as Melody Maker. Ms Bailey shut Nova, a women's magazine, within weeks of its launch. But some questioned her lack of senior experience in newspapers.

Lorna Tilbian, an analyst at Numis, said: "Her real expertise is in magazines. The Mirror is crying out for someone with deep newspaper knowledge who can psych out Murdoch. But if they couldn't get that, getting a tough, commercial, operator like Sly Bailey is the next best thing."

Sir Victor said the company did not want to restrict itself to the small pool of potential candidates from the newspaper industry. Ms. Bailey was approached through Trinity's headhunters. "When you're looking for a new chief executive, you're looking for someone with leadership experience and expertise in managing and developing brands," he said.

Ms Bailey, who left school at 15 to work as a shop assistant, has had a meteoric career in the media industry. She started in the sector in telephone advertising sales at The Guardian in 1984, before moving to The Independent as advertising sales manager in 1987, joining IPC two years later.

At IPC, she found a mentor in its chairman David Arculus, and was on the board in 1994, at the age of 31, before becoming chief executive in 1999. The previous year, Reed Elsevier sold IPC for £860m to Cinven, which gave Ms Bailey three years to put the business in shape to sell on. She pulled off the sale in 2001, for £1.15bn to AOL Time Warner.

In her new role at Trinity Ms Bailey will be one of Britain's most senior women chief executives, when she joins in February. In the media industry only Majorie Scardino, the chief executive of Pearson, will be running a bigger company. Elsewhere, just two women run companies of a similar market value to Trinity, Belinda Earl at Debenhams and Rose Marie Bravo at Burberry.