Arnd Wagner is to become the new Head of Group Communications at chemicals group Clariant. He has replaced Walter Vaterlaus, who is moving to pharmaceutical company Nycomed, effective Aug. 1, according to a statement. Wagner was most recently head of corporate communications for Amgen International in Europe. Prior to that, his career included Aventis and ABB. Walter Vaterlaus, who headed communications at Clariant from 1995 to 2001 and since 2004, is leaving the company at his own request. At the international pharmaceutical company Nycomed, which is moving its headquarters from Copenhagen to Zurich as part of the acquisition of Altana Pharma, Vaterlaus will become Senior Vice President Corporate Communications.

 SRG is in a spending mood: to mark ten years of cooperation with local filmmaking, the "Pacte de l'audiovisuel", it is supporting Swiss film with an additional CHF 500,000. SRG Director General Armin Walpen told SonntagsBlick: "With this, SRG is showing how important Swiss film is to it". Over the past ten years, SRG has already spent over 175 million on promoting the Swiss film industry. Swiss film can also count on SRG in the future. Walpen continues: "It is worth investing even more resources in this cultural footprint of Switzerland".

 Because of their reporting on the committee of inquiry into the war on terror, 17 German journalists are being investigated for aiding and abetting the betrayal of secrets. The reactions were prompt and fierce: associations, trade unions and MPs saw the proceedings as an attack on press freedom, while the FDP even called for a change in the law to explicitly exempt journalists from prosecution for breaching official secrets. The investigations were ordered by the President of the Bundestag, Norbert Lammert (CDU), following a criminal complaint against unknown whistleblowers on the committee of inquiry in question. Among other things, the committee dealt with the abduction of terror suspects by the CIA. The charges were primarily directed against members of the Bundestag and other officials suspected of having disclosed confidential files to the public. However, the investigation also includes helpers such as office staff and journalists, according to an SDA report. Various reports have appeared in the media that apparently contain information from secret files.

 The world has one more advertising festival: this year, the Intercontinental Advertising Cup (ICAC) is taking place for the first time. The aim is not to compete with other award shows. Instead, the ICAC aims to evaluate local creativity on a global scale. Good local ideas are all too often overlooked because they are not sufficiently international - even though they were created for a local audience and not for an international jury, according to a press release. The ICAC is the continuation of various regional festivals. The finalists of the Asia-Pacific competition Adfest, the Latin American FIAP, the Central European Golden Drums and the Art Directors Club of Europe will automatically take part in the new competition in 2007.
The European finalists will be selected by a separate pre-selection jury. Frank Bodin, CEO of Euro RSCG Switzerland, is one of the members of this committee. "With the award, we want to honor the best work from the different continents and recognize those campaigns that are truly relevant to the industry," Bodin told Werbewoche.
In addition to Bodin, the European pre-selection jury consists of the following members: Milka Pogliani (Executive Creative Director, McCann Worldgroup, Italy; President of the jury), John Pallant (Executive Creative Director Europe of Saatchi & Saatchi Worldwide, England), Joakim Jonason (founder of Anjovis) and Amir Kassaei (Chief Creative Officer of DDB Group Germany). This jury does not hand out awards, but will select the finalists. The winners will be selected by an international jury in November.
The awards will be presented in Valencia from November 22 to 24, 2007. The deadline for submissions is August 31, 2007.

 The publishing house Axel Springer and Publigroupe have sealed the purchase of the online marketing company Zanox. The two companies announced in May that they were jointly acquiring the Internet specialist. Publigroupe and Axel Springer, which owns Handelszeitungs-Verlag and Jean Frey in Switzerland, intend to expand their activities in Internet-based distribution and at the same time secure access to a technology platform in a rapidly growing market segment, according to a communiqué. With the finalization of the acquisition, Zanox announces the composition of the Supervisory Board: Andreas Wiele, Chief Magazine and International Officer of Axel Springer, is the new Chairman of the Supervisory Board. In addition, Jens Müffelmann and Thomas Kaiser have been appointed to the Supervisory Board. Müffelmann is Head of the Electronic Media division at Axel Springer. Thomas Kaiser is a member of Publigroupe's Group Management and responsible for Business Development.

 For the sixth time, representatives of large companies and experts from the telecommunications industry will meet on October 18 for the "MobileBusiness Enterprise Forum". This year's main topics are the mobile web, security, trends and payment by cell phone. International speakers, including Peter Schuepbach (Kyte.tv, San Francisco) and Nicole Dufft (Berlecon Research, Berlin), will speak on topics relevant to the future under the motto "Navigate to success". The program also includes breakout sessions, panel discussions, a roadshow for SMEs and academic workshops. The organizers point out in the press release that the "Enterprise Forum" focuses on companies that are already using mobile solutions and want to find out what will be coming onto the market in the next few years.

 What RTL can do, the Swiss FDP women now want to do too: Create a lot of hype with a casting. The ladies of the liberal party are looking for "real-life liberal women" who "identify with the core concerns of the FDP women" and want to appear in an election commercial, according to an internal paper in the Sonntagszeitung. Anyone who wants to take part must qualify in a public casting in Zurich or Bern at the end of August. The commercial will show scenes that deal with the compatibility of work and family life. The Sonntagszeitung suspects that the FDP women want to focus more on packaging than on content with this campaign. The intention is that the casting will attract more attention than the film itself. However, FDP Women's Secretary Barbara Perriard emphasizes that the women are very serious about the campaign: "We are not running a fun campaign. But we have to set ourselves apart from the party as a whole with our fun-filled implementation if we want to be perceived as a liberal women's lobby". Politics and pleasure are not necessarily mutually exclusive. In order to maintain the fun factor, however, it is to be hoped that the FDP ladies do not fall for the idea of hiring broadcast-conscious jurors à la Dieter Bohlen in the Helvetic format for their casting.

 The sale of Dow Jones, the publisher of the Wall Street Journal, continues to occupy the media around the globe. Media mogul Rupert Murdoch is buying the publishing house for 5.6 billion dollars. This was preceded by a long tug-of-war, but the Bancroft family finally agreed to the sale. The English Sunday Times, which itself belongs to Murdoch's empire, traces the negotiations and shows the tactics Murdoch has been using for around ten years to take over Dow Jones. The deal is also still a topic of discussion in the Swiss media: NZZ am Sonntag, for example, concludes that a financially strong and determined investor can buy a newspaper if he really wants it - the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in Germany makes a similar point with its final claim: "Unsaleability is obviously relative".
Many media outlets are concerned about what will happen to the Wall Street Journal, a quality newspaper. Criticism is being voiced that the paper will have to follow commercial interests more closely. For the Sonntagszeitung, however, the fears that Murdoch will change the newspaper's political orientation are difficult to understand: "Why would a man with such a keen sense for making the right business decisions jeopardize the reputation of a newspaper?". The fear of all Murdoch newspapers being brought into line is also unfounded: The English Times, the Sun and the Sunday Times, for example, follow different lines. However, it remains to be seen whether Murdoch really does not interfere with editorial freedoms.

 The Hans Ringier Foundation is awarding this year's "European Prize for Political Culture" to Serbian President Boris Tadi? He receives the 50,000 euro award for "his thinking and work as a courageous and committed democrat who fights against nationalist tendencies in his country and leads Serbia on the path to the European Union", as stated in a Ringier communiqué. The prize, awarded for the second time, was presented during the "Dîner républicain" at the Castello del Sole in Ascona, hosted by Frank A. Meyer, who always organizes this dinner during the Locarno Film Festival. A number of celebrities were present at the award ceremony, with German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivering the laudatory speech for Tadi? Guests at the award ceremony included the Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey, the Swiss Federal Councillor and Minister of Culture Pascal Couchepin, the Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Culture Francesco Rutelli, the Serbian Foreign Minister Vuk Jeremi? and the Governing Mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit.
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, top French politician Dominique Strauss-Kahn, publisher Michael Ringier, Swiss author Adolf Muschg and EnBW CEO Utz Claassen served on the jury, which was chaired by Frank A. Meyer. The European Prize was awarded for the second time this year; in 2006 it went to Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker.

 The US investment group Tiger Global has bought the Swiss job portal Jobs.ch for more than 100 million Swiss francs. According to Cash Daily, the job portal had been negotiating with potential buyers for more than nine months. A good 40 percent of these were American. Mark Sandmeier, CEO of Jobs.ch, sees this as normal: the growth potential in America has almost been exhausted, which is why US investors are now concentrating on the European market. For Thomas Sterchi, the majority shareholder of the job portal, the deal has certainly paid off. According to Cash Daily, Jobs.ch is expecting a turnover of 22.5 million Swiss francs for 2007.

 On the occasion of the Locarno Film Festival, the Federal Office of Culture (FOC) provided information on its future film festival policy. The festivals supported by the federal government will now be divided into so-called A-festivals and secondary categories "Un certain regard" and "Un nouveau regard". The A-festivals include those festivals that have proven to have a broad national and international appeal: The Locarno International Film Festival, the Visions de réel in Nyon, which is dedicated to documentary films, and the Solothurn Film Festival. The federal government's press release puts the total annual contributions to these three events at two million francs; 1.35 million francs go to Locarno, Nyon receives 400,000 francs and Solothurn is supported with 330,000 francs.
The "Un certain regard" category includes the four biggest small ones: The Fantoche Animation Film Festival in Baden (75,000 francs), the International Fantastic Film Festival in Neuchâtel, (75,000 francs), the International Short Film Festival in Winterthur (50,000) and the Zurich Film Festival (50,000). The Fribourg International Film Festival, which is currently restructuring its organization and positioning, will receive an annual subsidy of CHF 100,000 for the 2008 edition.
Un nouveau regard" covers small, highly specialized film festivals. These make an important contribution to film culture, according to the federal government's press release. The expert commission deemed the creative and focused perspectives of Videoex (Zurich), Talent Screen (Zurich), Black Movie (Geneva) and the Lausanne Underground Film and Music Festival to be worthy of support. All of them will receive sponsorship of CHF 25,000 per year.

 In its latest issue on Thursday, Weltwoche devotes itself to the Ringier media company and writes, among other things, that the free newspaper Cash daily is suffering from an acute lack of business journalistic profile, which can be seen from the fact that the newspaper publishes half-page barbecue tips in the style of "Never hold the grill too close to the embers". On the same day, Ringier announced in a communiqué that Cash daily had established itself with its print and multimedia offering according to the results of the second user panel "Publi Dialogue" in 2007. According to the panel, users have an income well above the Swiss average and the proportion of university graduates is above average.
Compared to the last survey, the proportion of top executives among users has increased, as the press release explains further. The main topics of interest to users are business and finance, politics, careers, technology and travel. Together with the NZZ, Cash daily is named as the most frequent source of information for these topics.
According to the press release, awareness of all multimedia offerings has risen and reader loyalty has increased significantly. As a result, 96 percent of those surveyed would recommend Cash daily to others and 86 percent would miss the service if it were no longer on the market. The panel concludes that the multimedia concept covering business topics is considered a reliable and secure value by the target group.