CEO of STS Media to leave company

General Director of STS Media Yuliana Slashcheva will leave her post. This was reported by the Vedomosti newspaper, citing sources close to the holding's owners.

According to the publication, the decision was made by Slascheva together with the holding's shareholders. It is unknown who will become the new head of the company. Representatives of STS Media and shareholders declined to comment.

“Instead of developing new businesses, I had to first of all deal with selling the company due to new restrictions for foreigners in the media, fight against the decline in the audience of the STS channel, which began before me, and all this against the backdrop of a sharp decline in the TV advertising market due to the economic crisis in the country,” the publication quotes Slascheva as saying in 2015.

The heads of major TV channels and media companies […] have different opinions about Slascheva’s work. Some say that the CEO found herself in difficult conditions and did everything she could […]. Others believe that Slascheva failed to cope with the chaos at STS Media, but talked a lot about her successes. The third point of view is that Slascheva is generally a good manager, but she really lacked experience in managing large TV channels.

Vedomosti

• Yuliana Slascheva became CEO of STS-Media in 2013. Before that, she headed the communications agency Mikhailov and Partners, founded by her husband Sergei Mikhailov.
• In 2015, due to the law on limiting the share of foreigners in media ownership, STS-Media changed shareholders. Previously, 38 percent of the company belonged to the Swedish MTG, 37 percent were traded on the NASDAQ exchange, and the remaining 25 percent belonged to the Cypriot company Telcrest of Yuri Kovalchuk. As a result, 75 percent of the company was acquired by the holding company UTV of Alisher Usmanov and Ivan Tavrin.
• The STS-Media holding includes the STS, Domashniy, Che, STS Love and other TV channels.