Mikhail Mikhailin, editor of the leading liberal news web site Gazeta.ru, has replaced Azer Mursaliyev as editor-in-chief of the Kommersant newspaper.
Mursaliyev, who was appointed editor before billionaire Alisher Usmanov bought Kommersant in 2006, has been named editor of the Kommersant publishing house, said Demyan Kudryavtsev, general director of the house.
No new editor has been appointed to Gazeta.ru.
The reshuffle also saw Andrei Vasilyev, a former editor-in-chief of Kommersant, named as an aide to Usmanov, chairman of the board of the publishing house. Vasilyev remained a board member as well.
Usmanov bought the publishing house in September 2006 from the late Georgian businessman Badri Patarkatsishvili, who had co-owned the company with Boris Berezovsky since 1999 but bought Berezovsky's share earlier in 2006.
Kommersant was founded in 1989 by Vladimir Yakovlev, a reporter at Ogonyok magazine, and Kremlin spin doctor turned political analyst Gleb Pavlovsky.
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