The revamped IHT will offer a raft of new writers, features, columns and focus. And the paper plans to go worldwide with colour at some point during the first quarter of the year.
Randy Weddle, managing director, Asia-Pacific, said the beefed up 116-year-old publication will offer a broader perspective to the global business audience.
Plans for the revamp come on the heels of the Financial Times launching its Asia edialthough Weddle denied that the IHT's hand was forced. He said plans had been in the pipeline for sometime.
"While we may cover the same world stories on the front page, it is not the same newspaper for the same person," he said.
"In terms of content and who our readership is, we are not really driven by the competition. What drives us with the FT and the Journal is advertising, because we are all looking for the same advertising revenue."
The IHT's commercial operations were given a boost last year when The New York Times Company bought the paper from The Washington Post. The purchase was seen as the first step in the company's strategy to establishing a global brand. Weddle said the buy-out would not mean a name change for the IHT.
Achilles Tsaltas, IHT's deputy managing director, Asia-Pacific, said the paper could now offer advertisers a truly global reach by combining the IHT's international market with the New York Times' domestic market.
"One of the driving forces behind this single ownership was to achieve this global buy potential, so we could really compete on a global scale," he said.
Tsaltas said the changes to the paper would be reflected in the website which would remain free for "a little while longer".
Commenting on the revamp, a media analyst at a leading research company, said the international business executive was a difficult and expensive demographic to reach.
"You need a core readership to attract marketers," he said. "It is one thing to change the content but quite another to change the core readership. There is a danger you may lose casual readers if you focus too much on the international business person."