By Christo Volschenk
On Nov. 1, 2011 Finnish media group Alma Media announced a restructuring, aimed at accelerating digital growth and improving operational efficiency. Today the company announced the merger of its regional and local newspaper units into a single business unit called Alma Regional Media – and named the first casualties.

Juha Ruotsalainen, managing director of Aamulehti Publishing and Matti Ilmivalta, managing director of Northern Media – the two units that were merged – resigned earlier this month. The new entity is headed by Kari Juutilainen, the company said.

Juutilainen explained the next step of the restructuring: “Our goal is to increase efficiency and improve the quality perception of readers and advertisers. To that end we will carefully merge the back-office functions supporting all of Alma Regional Media´s 34 newspapers and rid it of overlaps.”

For the full media statement (in English) go here.