Leonard Asper has stepped down as president and chief executive officer of CanWest Global Communications Corp., a media company founded by his father, to “avoid any concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest,” he said in a company statement, reports the Vancouver Sun. CanWest Media Inc. has been in creditor protection since early October, and is trying to restructure its main division, home to Global TV and other assets. Meanwhile, creditors control its other major arm, CanWest LP, which is in charge of publishing assets; it filed under the Companies’ Creditors Arrangement act (CCAA) in January. Only the National Post, of all the newspapers, remains outside CCAA. Asper, 46, took control of the company in 1999 after father Izzy stepped down. Under him, it acquired the Southam newspaper chain, which owned papers including the Post, the Vancouver Sun and The Gazette, in Montreal. In 2007, with Goldman Sachs, it acquired a series of specialty TV channels, but as CanWest became loaded with debt, it was hard-hit by the recession.