OREANDA-NEWS. August 3, 2011. Alyona Gromnitskaya was appointed CEO of Segodnya Multimedia (publishing holding of the SCM Group).

The 67-year-old Guillermo Schmitt, the CEO of Segodnya Multimedia in the last five years, has made the decision to retire and work for company in the other capacity. Mr. Schmitt will keep working for Segodnya Multimedia as a member of the Supervisory Board.

"We really regret that Guillermo decided to step down from his post as CEO of Segodnya Multimedia. We are very happy that we have had an opportunity to work with a professional of this level as Guillermo Schmitt. He helped to bring our publishing business to a higher quality level. Thanks to the success of Guillermo and the Holding's team we have a strong foundation for further growth and development," commented Yekaterina Lapshina, SCM Director of Media Business Development. Also we pin high hopes on the new CEO of the publishing group. We have no doubt that Alyona's expertise and professional competences will help retain and develop our team, make our editions even more interesting and popular among readers and arrive at new growth horizons."

"I'm grateful to Segodnya Multimedia shareholders for support and to our team for cooperation during my tenure at the company. At all times despite tangled situation at the market and even amid economic recession we managed to deliver good performance I am proud of, and this is an achievement of all our employees," said Guillermo Schmitt.

Long-term goals and objectives of Segodnya Multimedia remain unchanged. Primarily, they include strengthening leadership position of Segodnya, the biggest national daily, expanding regional presence, including regional editions of Segodnya and other publications run by the holding, and creating a convergent newsroom that will produce content for all media types and expand the holding's Internet presence.

Alyona Gromnitskaya commented on her appointment, "I'm happy to be a leader of the excellent team that produces newspaper No. 1 in Ukraine. Together we will maintain leadership in the publishing market, grow and steadily outrun our competitors. I hope that the innovative editorial principles which we are going to develop jointly will set new quality standards in Ukraine journalism. I'll do my best to bring fresh perspective to the development strategy of Segodnya Multimedia and help the company achieve high results."