People and Business: DTI panel

EIGHT NEW members have been appointed to the panel that is maintained by the Department of Trade and Industry for dealing with newspaper mergers that are referred to the Monopolies and Mergers Commission (MMC).

When a merger is referred to the MMC, up to three members of the panel may be seconded to the MMC to help decide on that particular deal.

The new panel members include Eve Pollard, former editor of the Sunday Mirror, Professor Donald Trelford, ex-editor of The Observer, and Charles Wilson, former managing director of Mirror Group and a former editor of The Independent.

Kim Howells, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Competition and Consumer Affairs, has also appointed five others: Sarwar Ahmed, who founded Eastern Eye in 1989; Linda Christmas, director of the post-graduate course in newspaper journalism at City University, London; William Gibson, former managing director of Financial Times Business Information; Gerry Holbrook, former managing director of Yorkshire Post Newspapers, and Joyce Hopkirk, the former launch editor of Cosmopolitan.