Bankoff named Netscape president

Jim Bankoff, who served as the vice-president of strategy and operations for the AOL brand, will take over responsibility for directing business operations and managing growth at Netscape.com and the Netbusiness initiative, an online destination for small businesses.

Martin will stay on with AOL (aol) in a different capacity, the company said in a press release.

The announcement comes exactly one week after the Federal Communication Commission gave its final blessing to the merger between AOL and Time Warner.

Yesterday, AOL announced that former BMG Entertainment executive Kevin Conroy will head up AOL's newly created music initiative.

Analysts say such announcements are to be expected. "You really do expect these kind of movements to occur after a major merger," said Ken Kiarash, an analyst at Buckingham Research Group. "I expect we will see this happen more in the next couple of months." Netscape's new president Bankoff comes to his job after five years at AOL. In his former role with the company, Bankoff managed business strategy, new category development and content acquisition in addition to several cross-brand strategic initiatives for the AOL Interactive Services Group. Bankoff also led the AOL Plus and AOL Music programming groups. In addition, after the merger of Netscape and AOL, he worked on integrating the two companies and developing strategic plans for Netscape. Prior to joining AOL in 1995, Bankoff worked at Ruder Finn's Global Public Affairs group and CNN. He earned an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor's degree from Emory University.