Mickey Kalifa Appointed UK General Manager of OpenTV; Kalifa Brings Strong Media Commercial and Financial Experience to Head Up UK Operations at OpenTV
2001-06-08
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OpenTV (NASDAQ and AEX:OPTV), the world's leading interactive television and media solutions company, today announced the appointment of Mickey Kalifa as UK General Manager.
Kalifa brings 10 years of experience in senior management, business development and finance at a number of key blue-chip European media corporations, including UPC, Pacific Century Cyberworks (PCCW/NOW), BSkyB, Time Warner and The Walt Disney Company.
Kalifa joins OpenTV from PCCW/NOW, a premier global converged media business, where he held the position of Head of Business Development. At PCCW/NOW, Kalifa was responsible for devising and executing the company's broadband Internet and TV business plan as well as defining the service's programming and content.
"Our UK team offers a depth of knowledge and skills from every aspect of the interactive television industry, from back-end TV-commerce through platform development and television delivery," said James Ackerman, CEO of OpenTV. "We believe that the combination of Mickey's business leadership and new media experience complements and reinforces OpenTV's tremendous capabilities as it moves up the interactive television value chain."
Kalifa will lead the senior management team at OpenTV's UK operations, based in Covent Garden, London and will report in to Regis Saint Girons, Managing Director and Senior Vice President of Sales for Europe at OpenTV. The team reporting to Kalifa includes Paul Devlin, former sales director at Conova Systems and business development manager at BT Broadcast Services, Nick Fishwick, former head of engineering at Open.... and Matthew Huntingdon who previously led Oracle's tv-commerce development team.
"I am delighted to be working with such a talented team at a very exciting time in the interactive television marketplace," said Kalifa. "The dynamic growth of digital TV and the approaching analogue switch-off in the UK are creating major new opportunities for OpenTV. I look forward to helping take our interactive TV applications and services business even further forward while consolidating our leadership in the middleware business."
Kalifa previously held the position of Director of Finance and Business Development at UPC Digital, the largest cable television provider in Continental Europe. At UPC Digital, he was responsible for strategic planning and financial evaluation of UPC's conversion to digital across eight territories. Prior to this appointment, Kalifa was CFO of the pay-tv company, At Entertainment/Wizja TV, acquired by UPC for $1.2 billion.
Earlier, Kalifa was the Finance Director of Sky Ventures Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of BSkyB, where he was involved in investment management and business development of BSkyB's joint venture channels, including Nickelodeon and Paramount. Prior to this he spent two years at Time Warner (Publishing) Inc., where he was responsible for the division's financial, consumer marketing and distribution operations.
Kalifa's experience in the media industry began in 1992 where he took on the role of European Financial Controller at Young and Rubicam Europe. Following this, Kalifa built on this role and moved to The Walt Disney Company in the USA.
Kalifa undertook his professional training with PricewaterhouseCoopers, where he qualified as a Chartered Accountant. He holds an undergraduate degree in Economics from The University of Leicester.
About OpenTV
OpenTV is the world's leading interactive television and media solutions company. OpenTV builds a complete software and infrastructure platform that enables digital interactive television and brings on-demand content to other digital communications devices. OpenTV solutions are crafted to meet the needs of digital communications networks and include operating middleware, content applications, content creation tools, professional services expertise, and strategic consulting.
At present, OpenTV software has been shipped with or installed in 16 million digital set-top boxes worldwide and has been selected by 43 digital cable, satellite and terrestrial communications networks in over 50 countries, including BSkyB in the United Kingdom; TPS and Noos in France; PrimaCom in Germany; Via Digital in Spain; Stream in Italy; DIRECTV(TM) Latin America LLC; and EchoStar's DISH Network and USA Media Group in the U.S. In addition, 31 digital set-top box manufacturers have licensed OpenTV's software to date, and more than 1,100 developers have joined the company's OpenAdvantage developer program.
Worldwide headquarters for OpenTV is located in Mountain View, Calif. Information on OpenTV is available at www.opentv.com.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contemplated herein, including statements regarding anticipated revenue, net loss, earnings per share, anticipated deployment of set-top boxes, the market for interactive television and revenues generated from interactive television. Actual results can differ materially. Risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ include, but are not limited to, the rate at which the interactive television market will continue to expand, particularly in the UK, the timely identification and development of new products and services, customer acceptance of those products and services and the pricing thereof, the impact of competitive products and services and the pricing of those products and services, whether interactive television industry-wide revenues will match the revenue estimates provided by industry analysts, and other risk factors detailed in the Registration Statements on Forms F-1 and F-4, the Annual Report on Form 20-F and other documents filed from time to time by OpenTV Corp. with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Note to Editors: OpenTV, OpenAuthor, OpenTV Runtime, OpenStreamer, and the OpenTV logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of OpenTV, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
All OpenTV products and services may not be available in all geographic areas.
CONTACT: OpenTV Europe
Riki Rau, +33 1 5858 2200
urau@europe.opentv.com
or
OpenTV Investor Relations
Gary Fuges, +1 650 429 5531
gfuges@opentv.com
or
Miller/Shandwick Technologies
David Lawrence and Tali Slater, +44 207 240 8666
dlawrence@miller.shandwick.com and
tslater@miller.shandwick.com
URL: businesswire.com
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