US Edition 
Tom Mockridge profile: a trusted lieutenant of Murdoch's empire
Sky Italia head Tom Mockridge has been appointed CEO of News International following the resignation of Rebekah Brooks amid the News of the World phone-hacking scandal.
New Zealand-born Mr Mockridge, 55, who has been Sky Italia chief executive since its launch in 2003, started his career as a newspaper journalist in the 1970s; first as a New Zealand finance reporter then for the Sydney Morning Herald as economics editor. He also spent some time at The Australian.
After several years working as a journalist, Mr Mockridge became an adviser to former Australian prime minister Paul Keating when Mr Keating was Treasurer for the Labour government of the 1980s.
In January 1991 Mr Mockridge joined News Limited, Rupert Murdoch's holding company for newspapers in Australia. He was assistant CEO to News Limited for five years working for chairman and chief executive Ken Cowley.
He later became CEO to Foxtel, News Corp's Australian pay-for cable and satellite TV service. Three years later he moved to Hong Kong for a joint new media venture between News Corp and Hong Kong Telecom, eventually working alongside Rupert Murdoch's Asian satellite TV service Star TV.
At this point Mr Mockridge moved back to New Zealand to head the country's largest newspaper group Independent Newspapers, a publicly listed company part-owned by News Corp. He was also chairman of Sky New Zealand.
In 2002, Tom Mockridge moved to Italy and became CEO of Sky Italia in 2003 after leading the merger between pay-TV networks Stream (owned by News Corp) and Telepiu. The merger attracted the scrutiny of the telecommunications regulator as it created a monopoly of the Italian football pay-TV market.
Sky Italia, a pay-TV business nearly twice the size of News International's UK operations in terms of staff and profits, is in direct competition with the Italian media empire Mediaset, owned by Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
Mr Mockridge, who has two young children with his Italian wife, was locked in a seemingly endless war of words with Mr Berlusconi during his time in Italy as legal battles were fought over football pricing, access to Italy's digital field and TV taxes.
In 2008 he was appointed managing director of European Television, and in February 2009 was appointed non-executive director of BSkyB. He also is a member of the supervisory board of Sky Deutschland.