Within the pan-European channel Euronews, no one expected the hasty departure of Guillaume Dubois. The company’s general director since 2022 was however ousted from his position in the space of a few hours, Friday October 11. The leader announced “revocation” of his mandate “with immediate effect”through an email sent to employees on Friday, shortly before 6 p.m. A text, revealed by the media Politico, that The World was able to consult. An hour earlier, at 5 p.m., an extraordinary board of directors was held and quickly ratified the departure of Mr. Dubois through a vote. “No explanation of the reasons for the dismissal of Guillaume Dubois has been provided to anyone”deplores a union representative wishing to remain anonymous.
Addressing employees in his farewell email, Guillaume Dubois said he took note of this decision, while regretting it. The former general director of BFM-TV and former editorial director of The Express also boasts “the incredible transformation of the company that its disastrous financial health had made necessary”referring multiple times to the transfer of the Euronews nerve center from Lyon to Brussels. The transition to a new model, as close as possible to the European institutions, was made painfully with a job protection plan leading to the departure of 170 people out of 380 employees and widening the company’s deficit to the tune of of thirty million euros.
Nevertheless assuming “this terrible decision in the name of the recovery of Euronews”Guillaume Dubois claims, in his email, “the best operating result in ten years” for the year 2024, without giving figures. However, the objective of achieving balanced accounts by the end of 2024 cannot, according to our information, be achieved. And this, despite the two calls for tenders from the European Union (EU) won by the channel and which would represent, in total, almost a dozen million euros, as much as in previous years. Contacted, Mr. Dubois did not respond to our requests.
Positioning considered very conservative
To replace him, Pedro Vargas David, president of Alpac, a mysterious Portuguese investment fund shareholder in Euronews, but also president of the board of directors of the channel, chose the German journalist Claus Strunz, aged 58. After twenty-six years spent within the Axel Springer media group – where Mr. Strunz was notably vice-president in charge of television and video, but also editor-in-chief of the tabloid Bild and its Sunday edition Bild am Sonntag – he was appointed general director and information director of Euronews.
You have 55.31% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.