Word: mohn
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...letter to the staff Middlehoff, 49, said he was leaving because "it was obvious that my strategy was not compatible any longer with the views of the supervisory board and those of our majority partner." In a television interview, he said the main difference with that majority partner - the Mohn family, which controls 74.9% of the shares - was over a stock market listing expected in 2005. "It was my plan to keep Bertelsmann at the top of the world," Middelhoff said...
...shares. Some analysts found the price too high. But what really made the deal hot was Bertelsmann's agreement to allow Groupe Bruxelles to sell the shares on the stock market as soon as 2005. Until then all of the company's shares were closely held by the Mohn family and had never been traded. Middelhoff had made no secret that he wanted publicly traded shares to use as currency in making further acquisitions. He pushed the Mohn family to sell some of its stake in the company at the same time as Groupe Bruxelles, but the family balked...
...family is headed by Reinhard Mohn, 81, who built a 19th century printer of church hymnals into one of Germany's most successful private companies, with interests from magazines and newspapers in its Gruner + Jahr subsidiary to its record and music company BMG, which includes recording stars like Christina Aguliera and Whitney Houston. Last year the company had earnings of €970 on revenues of €20 billion...
Even when he was supporting Middelhoff, Mohn had indicated he would go only so far in transforming the company. In an interview with Die Zeit last year, Mohn was asked why he hadn't taken the company public. "But then I could hardly have established this special enterprise culture," he said. "Corporations, especially the shareholder-value-oriented companies in the U.S., show a different attitude to capitalism." Told he could be one of Europe's richest men through an initial public offering, Mohn replied, "That does not mean anything...
...Though Mohn remains in ultimate control, there were indications last week that he was ceding more responsibility to his wife Liz, 61, a former secretary at the firm who met Reinhard during a game of musical chairs. According to German newspapers, it was Liz Mohn who confronted Middelhoff last week and told him he had to go. It was also she who was appointed last week to head the Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft, the holding company that controls the corporation through the shares owned by the family as well as the secretive Bertelsmann Foundation...