Mark Thompson, the outgoing director general of the British Broadcasting Company (BBC), will take charge of the New York Times Company starting in November, the NY Times reported on Wednesday.
In addition to his executive roles, 55-years-old Thompson will also sit on the company’s board of directors.
The NY Times was without an executive since previous president Janet Robinson left the company in December of 2011.
Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the chairman of the Times Company and the newspaper’s publisher, said that Thompson is “a gifted and experienced executive with strong credentials whose leadership at the BBC helped it to extend its trusted brand identity into new digital products and services.”
Thompson is a graduate of the University of Oxford’s Merton College and he joined the BBC as a trainee in 1979. According to the BBC website, he oversaw 20,000 employees globally after he was appointed BBC Worldwide director general in 2004.