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Sly Bailey's Biography

 
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Sly Bailey was born Sylvia Grice on 24 January 1962 in South London.

She went to St Saviour's and St Olave's Grammar School for Girls, Dulwich, south-east London and briefly to the Italia Conti theatrical school.

Before getting into the media world, Sly Bailey's jobs included being a make-up artist for Revlon.

Her media career started in ad sales at The Guardian in the mid-1980s. In 1987, she left to become ad manager of The Independent. In 1989 Sly Bailey joined IPC as head of classified ad sales. In 1994 at the age of 31, she had become the youngest ever board member of IPC. In 1997, Sly Bailey became managing director of the company's television magazines, IPC tx Ltd.

In 1998 Sly Bailey was central to the £860m management buyout of the IPC business from Reed Elsevier. At the end of 1999, Sly Bailey was appointed chief executive of the entire IPC business.

In October 2001, she was involved in more large-scale corporate finance when she sold the business for around £1.2bn to Time Inc, the publishing division of AOL Time Warner, in what was the largest transatlantic media deal.

In 2003 Sly Bailey became chief executive of Trinity Mirror. She immediately attracted controversy for making hundreds of redundancies.

Sly Bailey is married to businessman Peter Bailey. She supports Spurs.

In July 2008 Sly Bailey was rated the 38th most powerful person in the UK media by Media Guardian.

In April 2009, Sly Bailey told a Digital Britain summit: "If the pressures of this recession put local newspapers out of business, think very hard about what we will be left with when we do emerge the other side. Super-dominant digital players like Google and the death of journalism as we know it."

On 7 April 2010, The Guardian reported that Sly Bailey had received a 66% increase in her total remuneration package in 2009 to £1.68m.

In July 2010, Sly Bailey was rated the 62nd most powerful person in the UK media by Media Guardian.

In May 2012, it was announced that Sly Bailey was to step down as chief executive of Trinity Mirror at the end of the year.



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