MICHAEL MARCH is a senior media and retail executive with more than 23 years’ experience living and working in Asia, including almost 18 years in Hong Kong and stints in Singapore, Bangkok, Taiwan and Japan. He is in the International Leaders Program of QVC, the home shopping business owned by Liberty Media, and currently serves as Senior Vice President of QVC Japan, based in Tokyo. Prior to joining QVC, Mr. March had a wide-ranging career in law, financial services and in the entertainment business.
He was previously an independent media consultant as well as Managing Director of Asian Investment Partners LLC (AIP), a boutique media and technology advisory firm, which he joined in 2004, after seven years in senior management roles in Asia for leading international media and entertainment companies.
Until 2004, Mr. March was Senior Vice President of Sony Pictures Television International, responsible for corporate development and all strategic initiatives for SPTI’s three lines of business – cable and satellite broadcasting, television program production, and content licensing. He also had regional management responsibility over Sony’s portfolio of cable and satellite networks in Asia (Asia regional channels AXN and Animax, and Indian channels Sony Entertainment Television (SET) and SET Max). Mr. March was Chairman of the Board of Super TV in Taiwan, also a Sony company prior to its sale, and negotiated the formation of and served as Director on the Board of the SET-Discovery Networks channel distribution joint venture in India, known as The One Alliance. He was also the lead negotiator for the acquisition from News Corporation of Indian broadcast rights to all ICC cricket matches played from 2003 to 2007, including two World Cups.
Prior to joining Sony in 1998, Mr. March was the first Managing Director of the National Geographic Channel Asia, then a 50-50 joint venture between GE’s NBC Television and National Geographic Television, and also served as General Counsel for NBC in Asia, where he spearheaded the merger of CNBC Asia with Dow Jones’s Asia Business News Channel. From 1992, when he returned to Asia, to 1996, Mr. March was Asia General Counsel for NYNEX Corporation (now Verizon Corp.) where he structured and negotiated complex wireline and wireless telecom infrastructure joint venture transactions involving more than US$1.5 billion in investment by NYNEX in Thailand, Indonesia, India, Japan and the Philippines, and was involved in the initial exploration of foreign investment projects in China’s telecommunications industry.
Between 1984 and 1992, Mr. March practiced law with the New York-based international law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in their offices in New York, Tokyo and Hong Kong, where he worked on friendly and contested M&A transactions, public and private equity and debt securities offerings, international joint ventures, project financings and federal legislation. Before joining Paul Weiss, he served as Law Clerk to Chief U.S. District Judge Joe Eaton, Southern District of Florida.
Mr. March holds Juris Doctor and M.S., Foreign Service, degrees from Georgetown University, and an A.B. from Middlebury College. He is married with two children and is a Mandarin Chinese and Japanese speaker.