Ignacio Santillana and Manuel Polanco named directors general of PRISA

Grupo PRISA, the publisher of El País, has restructured its organization with the goal of reinforcing the management of the different businesses and bolstering the synergy between the different branches of the company. With this reorganization, undertaken by the CEO Juan Luis Cebrián, the group will have two directors general: Ignacio Santillana and Manuel Polanco, who together will coordinate the many corporate operations and the workings of the numerous business units.

Manuel Polanco will be in charge of the business divisions of the group and will head its commercial division, while Ignacio Santillana will be at the helm of the finance department, corporate development, management control and planning, human resources and technology.

Active in the fields of education, information and entertainment, PRISA is the world's leading media group in the Spanish and Portuguese-languages. As well as El País, the group publishes sports daily As and the business and finance daily Cinco Días; it manages Unión Radio, which attracts 20 million listeners throughout Spain and Latin America, and owns Santillana, the group covering PRISA's operations in the fields of publishing, education and training; Sogecable, the company behind Digital+ and Cuatro, as well as the Portuguese channel TVI.

These latest appointments will do much to strengthen the corporate structures of Grupo PRISA. Ignacio Santillana has been Chief Operating Officer of PRISA since September 2001. Between 1978 and 1991, he previously held posts such as president, vice-president and board member at international companies in Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, USA, Puerto Rico and Rumania such as a GTE (USA) - now Verizon - Telefónica, Telefónica Internacional, AEB and Enisa.

Manuel Polanco holds a degree in economics and business administration from the Universidad Autónoma in Madrid, and has developed his professional career within PRISA. He has been chief executive officer of the Portuguese media group Media Capital since 2005. In 1991 he was appointed to manage Santillana Chile and Peru, was general manager of the Mexican daily paper La Prensa and he was in charge of the launch the American edition of El País. In 1996 he took over as international manager of Grupo Editorial Santillana in the Americas. In 1999 he was appointed chairman of Gerencia de Medios (GDM), and shortly thereafter he was made chairman of Grupo Empresarial de Medios Impresos (GMI). He has been a CEO at PRISA since 2001, a member of its Executive Committee as well as a member of the board at Sogecable since 2006.