QVC, Inc. on Wednesday announced the promotion of David Frey to president of QVC International, effective Jan. 1, 2007. Frey will assume the role currently held by Bill Costello, whose retirement was announced in 2005. Costello, who will retire in March, 2007, also serves as chief operating officer and chief financial officer for the West Chester, Pa.-based multimedia retail channel. A successor to those positions has not yet been announced.

Frey currently serves as vice chairman and chief executive officer of QVC Japan. In addition to serving as president of QVC International, Frey also will be promoted to chairman of QVC Japan, where he will remain stationed in his new position.

In addition to Japan, QVC also has televised shopping programming in Germany and the United Kingdom reaching more than 70 million homes.

“David brings a wealth of global management experience and achievement to his new role, and I am confident that he will lead QVC’s international programming with continued success,” said Mike George, president and CEO of QVC, Inc., to whom Frey will report. “During his career, David has been involved in the launch of six television shopping channels in four countries. Based on this knowledge and experience, he is poised to take our international success to the next level.”

Frey, who has more than 23 years of television production experience, joined QVC in 1999 and was initially responsible for identifying and recommending new international market opportunities before assuming the role of vice chairman of QVC Japan in 2000.

QVC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty Media Corp. attributed to the Liberty Interactive Group, is one of the largest multimedia retailers in the world, with annual revenue of more than $7 billion. Its programming is distributed to more than 160 million homes worldwide. The company’s website, QVC.com, is ranked among the top general merchant Internet sites. With subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan, QVC has shipped close to a billion packages in its 20-year history.

JCK