Virgin Radio chief leaves ahead of possible merger

Dan Sabbagh Fru Hazlitt, the chief executive of SMG's Virgin Radio, resigned suddenly yesterday, after her bid to become chief executive of the whole company stalled in the wake of a merger approach from UTV. Ms Hazlitt, who was credited with helping to stabilise the fortunes of Virgin Radio, told friends that she had left for "a

number of varied reasons — some obvious, some not" and indicated that she was likely to seek another job. Her departure was agreed last week and appeared to reflect that her chance of being influential in a combined SMG and UTV was limited. She had been running Virgin since August 2005. If SMG does merge with UTV, John McCann, UTV's

chief executive, is the favourite to head the enlarged group, whose interests would span three ITV licences in Scotland and Northern Ireland plus the Virgin and UTV's TalkSPORT radio business, which is run by Scott Taunton. SMG is operating without a permanent chief executive and had suspended the search for a new leader while it tried to resolve the merger talks. Ms

Hazlitt was one of four shortlisted candidates for the position — although she was not considered to be a frontrunner because she was reluctant to relocate from London to the company's Glasgow headquarters. Donald Emslie, in charge of SMCr's television operations, was also a candidate, although it is thought that the board had tried to recruit Andy Anson,

g who was Manchester United's commercial director. Mr Anson, however, opted to join the Association of Tennis Professionals, running its European arm. The vacancy emerged when SMG's board ousted Andrew Flanagan in the summer, its long-serving chief executive, amid investor dissatisfaction after a period of poor shareprice performance