Tuesday October 26, 5:16 pm Eastern Time
Company Press Release
SOURCE: ValueVision International, Inc.
ValueVision Names New Chief Financial Officer
Bell Canada Executive Richard Barnes Joins Shopping TV Network As It Expands Into Internet, Other Electronic Marketing Ventures
MINNEAPOLIS, Oct. 26 /PRNewswire/ -- ValueVision International, Inc. (Nasdaq: VVTV - news) today announced that Richard D. Barnes has been named Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of the Company. A key financial executive with Bell Canada in Toronto for the past three years, Barnes, 42, most recently served as Group Senior Vice President, Operations, and Financial Management.
Gene McCaffery, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ValueVision International, said: ''Dick Barnes' wealth of experience in both the communications industry and the financial community will prove to be invaluable as ValueVision moves forward in developing its interactive marketing plans with NBC and other strategic Internet partners.
''We sought a Chief Financial Officer with a diverse background, including acquisitions and direct contacts with the Wall Street community. Mr. Barnes provides those capabilities perfectly. Throughout his career, he has played major roles in formulating
corporate strategies and then establishing the financial systems and controls necessary for those plans to become successful.''
At Bell Canada, Barnes also was a Group Vice President of Finance, Planning, and Strategy. His prior business experience was principally in the consumer products industry, which included serving as Vice President and Controller of The Pillsbury Company in Minneapolis. From 1981 until 1993, Barnes was with Bristol-Myers Squibb. Positions he held with that organization included CFO and General Manager (Canada) of The Drackett Company, a Cincinnati-based subsidiary; CFO of
Bristol-Myers Products Canada Inc. in Toronto; and Controller of Bristol-Myers Pharmaceutical Group in Ottawa. He started his professional career with Procter & Gamble.
He holds a MBA in Finance (1981) from York University in Toronto and a Bachelor of Commerce (1979) from McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario.
Barnes, his wife, Joyce, and their three children, ages 15, 11, and 9, will be relocating to the Minneapolis area.
About ValueVision International, Inc.
ValueVision International, Inc. owns and operates the third largest and fastest growing home shopping network and a companion Internet shopping website (www.vvtv.com ), both which are being re-branded as SnapTV and SnapTV.com, respectively, as part of a wide-ranging direct e-commerce strategy the Company is pursuing with NBC Internet (NBCi). The moves are expected to position SnapTV and NBCi as the leaders in the ongoing convergence of television and the Internet, combining the promotional and selling power of television with the purely digital world of e-commerce. ValueVision, which is approximately 40% owned by GE Equity and NBC, offers live programming 24 hours per day, 7 days a week. As of September 14, 1999, approximately 32 million homes are able to receive the Company's programming on either a full or
part-time basis. Subject to shareholder and regulatory approval, NBCi is a new entity being formed as a result of the proposed merger of Snap.com, XOOM.com and several Internet assets of NBC.
ValueVision International's shares are traded on the NASDAQ Stock Market under the symbol VVTV. For additional information on ValueVision, please visit the Company's web site at vvtv.com.
(Note: The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides a ''safe harbor'' for forward-looking statements. Certain information included in this news release contains statements that are forward-looking such as statements relating to increased revenue and cable home distribution, the Company's future profitability, entrance into e-commerce and the continuing success in developing new strategic alliances (including the GE Equity and NBC alliance). There are certain important factors, such as consumer spending and debt levels, interest rates, competitive pressure on sales and pricing and the maintenance of distribution of the Company's programming that could cause results to differ materially from those forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that all forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainty, including the possibility that revenues and cable distribution will not continually increase, that gross profit margins will decrease, that e-commerce will not be
successful and other strategic alliances (including the GE Equity and NBC alliance) may not result in increased revenues, earnings or subscribers and that shareholders or regulators will not approve the proposed NBCi merger. For more information on the potential factors that could affect the Company's financial results, investors should refer to the Company's recent filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the Company's annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K.)
SOURCE: ValueVision International, Inc. |
