Ticino publisher Salvioni elected to the SDA Board of Directors
The Ticino publisher Giacomo Salvioni is a new member of the Board of Directors of the Swiss Dispatch Agency (SDA). This means that Ticino is once again present on the SDA supervisory board after many years.
The shareholders of SDA AG elected Salvioni to the Board of Directors on Wednesday at the General Meeting. Salvioni is, among other things, publisher of La Regione, co-editor of the commuter newspaper 20 minuti and president of the Ticino publishers' association Stampa Svizzera. The shareholders also unanimously confirmed Chairman of the Board Hans Heinrich Coninx and the seven incumbent Board members in their positions for another year. The SDA Board of Directors now has nine members (previously eight).
Integration of the Si
SDA, Switzerland's national news agency, looks back on a historic 2015. It was the last year of Sports Information (Si) as an independent subsidiary. Since January 1, 2016, Si has been part of SDA under the name SDA Sport. Sports Information has had a 94-year eventful history. The development of Si went hand in hand with the increasing importance of sports in society. In recent years, sport has increasingly become an economic factor with a political impact. SDA has responded to this. In order to be able to offer customers comprehensive sports coverage in the longer term, SDA decided to integrate sports into SDA as a fourth editorial department as of January 1, 2016, and to merge sports information with the Swiss Dispatch Agency. SDA Informatik was also integrated into SDA at the beginning of 2016. It had been founded 6 years ago together with the Austrian news agency APA and had been wholly owned by SDA since 2012. Its goal was to expand into third markets, which was only insufficiently successful.
Satisfactory result
The SDA Group, which in addition to Si and SDA Informatik also includes the Keystone photo agency, AWP Finanznachrichten and the news aktuell (Switzerland) communications company, closed the 2015 financial year satisfactorily in a difficult environment. Thanks to significantly lower operating expenses, profits increased. With operating income of 37.1 million Swiss francs (-3.5 percent) and operating expenses of 34.6 million Swiss francs (-8.1 percent), a net profit of 2.35 (previous year 0.57) million Swiss francs remained after taxes. There was a significant decline in personnel expenses, which fell by almost 10 percent to 25.4 million Swiss francs. (SDA)
