Mark Wood, the chief executive of ITN, has announced plans to step down after six years with the news broadcaster.

Mr Wood will leave early next year to "pursue opportunities outside the company" although he will remain in his dual role of ITN chairman “for a period”, the firm said in a statement.

ITN produces news programmes for ITV1, ITV London, Channel 4, and More 4 as well as supplying news to over 250 commercial radio stations. It also produces Setanta Sports News, the 24 hour sports news channel jointly owned by Virgin Media and Setanta.

Mr Wood is credited with leading ITN’s digital expansion. It’s multimedia division ITN On produces news and entertainment content for mobile and online platforms including Vodafone, 3, T-Mobile, MSN and Yahoo.

Mr Wood said: "I am proud that ITN is now flourishing as a diversified multi-media company while still delivering truly outstanding news programming to its network customers.”

ITN Source has become one of the largest video libraries in the world, selling video clips from over 800,000 hours of footage captured over three centuries. As well as ITN's own news material, ITN Source represents the British Pathé, Reuters, Channel 4, Granada and FOX News.

A spokesman for ITN's shareholders, which include ITV, Daily Mail and General Trust, Thomson Reuters and United Business Media, said: "ITN's new businesses are achieving double-digit growth this year and Mark has put in place a strong new commercial team which has shown it can sustain this pace.

"We intend to build on those successes and give every support to continuing a strategy aimed at growing profitable areas of business and creating shareholder value. "

Mr Wood has been ITN chief executive since 2003 and chairman since 1998. He was previously editor-in-chief of Reuters from 1989 to 2000, in charge of the company's news and television operations worldwide. Mr Wood joined Reuters in 1976 and was a correspondent in cities such as Vienna, Moscow and Bonn.

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