MEDIA HEADLINER: Yahoo!'s steady hand Martina King takes a crack at Europe.

King will bring confidence and experience to Yahoo! Europe, Alasdair Reid says.

Anyone other than Martina King would fret about the fact they'd been handed an exciting new opportunity at an internet company in the week that the biggest internet company of them all, AOL Time Warner, posted the biggest ever losses in corporate history. It's the sort of news that's likely to make your Champagne go down the wrong way.

In King's case, though, she probably regards this as the sort of suitably sombre background against which her own talent will shine all the brighter. And, clearly, she has shone at Yahoo!

Last week, in recognition of this, she was promoted from the top job in the UK and Ireland operation, a position she has held since joining the company in 1999, to the role of managing director of country operations across the whole of its European network. Replacing King in the UK will be Fru Hazlitt, who was previously the director of sales and marketing.

Yahoo!'s ability to buck recent trends (the US operation is now substantially in the black and last autumn it moved into profitability on an international front, too) has a lot to do with the quality of vision emerging from its Sunnyvale headquarters in California and the brand's enduring power. But its strength in the UK market is, observers say, largely down to King.

What's the secret? King says it helps that she has been round the media block. 'I'm experienced,' she admits. 'I have grown up in media. It makes me sound terribly old, doesn't it, but I've lived through a recession or two.'

In fact, King has done just about the lot in her time - print, TV, radio.