Peter Blacker Departs StarMedia For AOL Latin America & AOL Latino.

In a surprise move, Peter Blacker – Senior Vice President of Global Sales Strategy & Partnerships at StarMedia Network and the key executive in the success of StarMedia’s sales gains has departed and joined the AOL Latin America & AOL Latino team as Vice President /Interactive Marketing. His duties at AOL include direct sales and marketing responsibilities for their LatAM and US Hispanic efforts.

This is perceived as a major gain for AOl and increases the speculation that StarMedia is having internal problems and are aggressively looking for a strategic partner to help infuse more capital and help the company recapture some value. Speculation in the industry is that Terra Networks is being courted very aggressively by J.P. Morgan Partners to unload their 18% share of StarMedia. JP Morgan had invested $27 million in StarMedia and had seen their invest value rise to $470 million in 1999, but have seen their share value drop to $22 million or $5 million less than they originally invested.