Guardian Media Group plc (often referred to as GMG) is a company of the United Kingdom owning various mass media operations including The Guardian and The Observer. The Group is owned by the Scott Trust.

The company was founded as the Manchester Guardian Ltd in 1907 when C. P. Scott bought the Manchester Guardian from the estate of his cousin Edward Taylor. It became the Manchester Guardian and Evening News Ltd when it bought out the Manchester Evening News in 1924, later becoming the Guardian and Manchester Evening News Ltd to reflect the change in the morning paper's title. It adopted its current name in 1993. Its previous chief executive was Carolyn McCall, formerly Chief Executive of Guardian News and Media Limited and a former non-executive director of Tesco and chair of Opportunity Now. McCall left in June 2010 after being appointed Chief Executive of EasyJet. She was replaced by Andrew Miller in July 2010, he had previously been Chief Financial Officer of the Group.

In March 2007 GMG sold 49.9% of Trader Media Group to Apax Partners, in a deal that valued Trader Media Group at £1.35 billion. In December 2007 it was announced that GMG and Apax had made a successful bid to buy Emap's business-to-business arm for around £1 billion.

A media conglomerate, media group or media institution is a company that owns large numbers of companies in various mass media such as television, radio, publishing, movies, and the Internet. Media conglomerates strive for policies that facilitate their control of the markets across the globe.

According to the 2011 Fortune 500 list, The Walt Disney Company is America's largest media conglomerate in terms of revenue, with News Corporation, Time Warner, CBS Corporation and Viacom completing the top 5. Other major players are NBCUniversal, and Sony Corporation of America.

A conglomerate is, by definition, a large company that consists of divisions of seemingly unrelated businesses.

It is questionable whether media companies are unrelated, as of 2007^[update]. The trend has been strongly for the sharing of various kinds of content (news, film and video, music for example). The media sector is tending to consolidate, and formerly diversified companies may appear less so as a result. Therefore, the term media group may also be applied, however it has not so far replaced the more traditional term.^{[citation needed]}

Steve Tappin (born Harrogate 5 September 1966) is a CEO confidant for the leaders of some of the world's leading companies, the CEO of Xinfu and author of The Secrets of CEOs.

Tappin began his career with the chemical giant ICI. After he left, Tappin was mentored by Sir John Harvey-Jones. He has spent his career either as a CEO hmself or as a managing partner in a number of global professional service firms. Once such business he founded was edengene, a growth and corporate venturing consulting firm. Under Tappin's leadership, edengene won "Best Small Firm" and the "Gold Medal award for client work" from the Management Consultancies Association.

Tappin is a CEO coach and a personal confidant for many of the CEOs from the world's top companies. He is actively involved in many of the top performing global businesses such as Virgin, Deloitte, RSA and Bain Capital. He is also working with CEOs from some of the leading Chinese and Indian businsses applying The Secrets of CEOs. He regularly visits China and is writing a new book about Chinese CEOs, Dream Corporations, Dream Leaders, Dream life, which will be published by Beijing University Press.^{[citation needed]}

Carolyn McCall OBE (born 13 September 1961 in Bangalore, India), is the current Chief Executive of EasyJet.

The only child of British expatriate parents (her Scottish father ran the Far East division of a US textile multinational; her Irish mother worked for the British embassy in India), she was educated in India and Singapore until her teens, then at a Roman Catholic girls' boarding school in Derbyshire. She studied for a BA degree in history and politics at the University of Kent, Canterbury, where she met her husband Peter (the couple have three children and live in Berkhamsted).

On graduation she began training as a teacher, completing a year at Holland Park School. She then gained a Master’s in politics from the University of London, and on graduation joined construction group Costain. Offered a job on Kevin Kelly's Business magazine, she then applied to be a research planner at the The Guardian, where she started in 1986.

Moving to advertising sales, she was mentored by Caroline Marland. Rising through the Guardian Media Group behind Marand, Management Today magazine called her "One of the toughest operators to have risen through the Guardian Media Group's ranks." After rising to become CEO of Guardian Newspapers Ltd (now Guardian News & Media Ltd), she became CEO of GMG. During her tenure she sold the Manchester and regionally based business to Trinity Mirror, and a 49.9% of Trader Media Group to Apax Partners, in a deal that valued the business at £1.35bn.