Nick Percy Elevated in New BBC Studios Restructure

Nick Percy has been tapped as president of global markets at BBC Studios as the company consolidates its AsiaPac and EMEA distribution regions into a single unified business.

The combined EMEA and AsiaPac business under Percy’s leadership will be BBC Studios’ third regional unit, alongside the Americas and the U.K. He has held several roles at BBC Studios since 2010, including executive VP for EMEA, executive VP for Western Europe, VP and general manager for Central and Eastern Europe, director of business development and digital, and head of strategy.

The new global markets region comes in to effect on January 31. Percy’s team will include Phil Hardman as general manager and senior VP for Asia, Natasha Hussain as senior VP for MENA, Ding Ke as general manager for Greater China, Fiona Lang as general manager for Australia and New Zealand, Salim Mukaddam as senior VP for content sales markets in EMEA and Arran Tindall as senior VP of key markets in EMEA.

With the new structure, Jon Penn exits as executive VP for AsiaPac but will remain with the company next year to work on central projects, as well as helping with the transition.

Paul Dempsey, president of global distribution at BBC Studios, noted, “Nick is a strategic and talented leader who understands the complexities of the global markets regions and the focus for BBC Studios moving forward. I’m pleased that he is going to be leading the team through the next stage of our transformation.”

Dempsey added, “I’m grateful to Jon for his excellent leadership of the APAC region and before that the ANZ region, which saw the launch of BBC First, BBC Earth, BritBox and a production arm in Australia, achieved significant new carriage deals, saw the growth of Bluey into a huge international brand and closed multimillion-dollar framework deals in China. Both APAC and EMEA are in great shape to come together as a powerful global markets entity.”

Percy added, “Having represented both AsiaPac and EMEA in some of our global deals, I understand the value in merging these two regions in to one powerful team with oversight of the whole business. There will be many benefits, as well as trade-offs to be made, over the next few years, as we invest in our branded services, balance our global and regional deals, offer more in direct-to-consumer and ramp up our digital deals. I’m delighted to be working with the six regional SVPs and GMs and their local teams to accelerate our growth.”