Peter Horrocks

Director, Global News, BBC
BBC Global News and World Service

Peter is responsible for the world’s most respected news brand. As Director of BBC Global News his team provides trusted news to over a quarter of a billion people globally every week. He has responsibility for a global workforce of 3000, with annual revenues exceeding £400m.

Peter has an international reputation for thought leadership in major digital transformations. He led the transition of BBC News to become a multiplatform organisation in 2008. And in 2012 he conceived and delivered the “world’s newsroom”, the BBC’s innovative concept for the world’s leading multilingual, multimedia digital news operation.

He is in demand as a speaker at international conferences for his comprehensive vision of how organisations in many sectors need ruthlessly to turn their organisations inside out to cope with a digital world. A close focus on social media, digital data and innovative technologies is required for success, Peter argues.

He has a rare breadth experience across a variety of business/funding models – public sector, not-for-profit and commercial. He chairs BBC Global News Ltd, the UK’s largest turnover broadcast news organisation, with revenues of £110m pa. BBC Global News Ltd runs the advertising and TV subscriptions business that supports BBC World News and BBC.Com, the leading news website. Under Peter’s leadership GN Ltd revenues have grown by 20% (check) per annum.

In his public sector role as Director of the World Service, Peter is well practised in negotiating at the highest level of government. And he has extensive experience in parliamentary relations, including giving evidence to parliamentary committees.
Peter’s not-for-profit experience is through his chairmanship of BBC Media Action, a £40m (chk) per annum charity that delivers social transformation through media skills and communication in the world’s poorest countries.

As a journalist Peter has excelled in investigative and analytical programmes, becoming editor of the Newsnight and Panorama programmes. He won two BAFTAs. He has extensive experience in crisis management, both in reporting others’ and handling his own organisation’s.

Beyond the BBC, Peter has been on the advisory board to the Chancellor of Cambridge University. He is an adviser to the media protection organisation, Reporters Without Borders. Peter enjoys running, skiing, cycling and tennis. In all case he aspires to go faster, sadly with progressively diminishing success.