Business News
Saudi Research & Marketing Group
Wednesday 20. May 2009 - Niko Ruokosuo, CEO, Saudi Special Publishing Holding Company
Saudi Arabia is a prime market for internet growth in the next few years. The driving factors for growth are government spending on infrastructure, reduced pricing policies of the telecom companies, young population as well as freedom and flexibility of the internet.
Niko is going to speak about how SRMG, the largest and only publicly listed media company in the Middle-East, is planning to grow its business online and what role Escenic can play in that strategy.
About the Speaker:
Niko Ruokosuo is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Saudi Special Publishing Holding Company (SSPH), a division of Saudi Reserach and Marketing Group (SRMG), the largest and only publicly listed publishing company in the GCC region. SSPH has five business units operating in Licensed and custom publishing, Educational Books, Multimedia, On-line and Syndication.
Niko joined SRMG in November 2008 as Chief Operation Officer (COO). He was responsible for the Group operations directly in charge of its Publishing, Sales, Distribution and Subscription companies.
Prior to joining SRMG, Niko was President Sanoma Kaupunkilehdet (Sanoma City Papers). Sanoma Kaupunkilehdet (SKL) publishes city papers in Southern Finland with a combined print run of over 1.1 Million copies. SKL has products that cover four main distribution channels, home delivery, commuter, rack distribution and on-line.
Prior to the free sheet business in Finland, Niko was President of Recycler Classifieds, a subsidiary of The Los Angeles Times, from March of 2002 to end of 2004. Recycler Classifieds (Recycler) produces 35 weekly classified ad publications that are distributed through more than 7,000 retail outlets in the Los Angeles area. Recycler also has a web site with more than 400,000 unique visitors per month.
Before Recycler Niko held several positions at the Los Angeles Times ranging from IT and Prepress director to Vice President in Operations.
Prior to joining the The Times, Niko was manager of research at IFRA, a newspaper media and technology association based in Germany responsible for international research projects and consulting. Niko began his career as a Project Engineer at Helsingin Sanomat, the leading newspaper, also part of SanomaWSOY, in his native country, Finland.
Born in Helsinki, Finland, Mr. Ruokosuo holds a masters degree in graphic technology from the University of Technology, Helsinki.