Kantar Media appoints Sky’s Béhar as global CEO

Kantar Media has appointed Sky’s chief business officer Patrick Béhar as Global CEO.

Béhar will start in the role at the measurement and media research company in September. Kantar Media’s current global CEO Chris Allen will become global CFO.

Béhar has been at Sky since 2019, during a period when the Comcast-owned company introduced Sky Glass, which he spoke about at Adwanted Events’ Future of TV Advertising Global,  and last year’s streaming stick Sky Stream.

Before that he was a management consultant for two decades, first for Booz & Company (now PwC), Bain & Co, and McKinsey. Bain bought a 60% stake in Kantar from WPP in 2019.

The Media Leader reported in 2021 that Béhar is well known as direct, with a strong personality, and impatient to change Sky’s commercial operations. In his weekly column, editor Omar Oakes said his role was interpreted as putting “put the TV lifers on notice”.

Speaking about the sudden departure of then UK managing director Tim Pearson, who had just left MGOMD, one source told Oakes: “The average agency person is not ready to come in and start firing people. There is a significant change-management job to do there.”

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