Reinhard Mohn, the former chief executive of Bertelsmann, who turned the German publisher into one of the world’s top five media companies, died on Saturday aged 88, the company said yesterday.
Mohn, who was born in the town of Guetersloh, where Bertelsmann is based, took the helm at the publisher in 1947 after returning from a prisoner of war camp in Kansas.
The great-great-grandson of founder Carl Bertelsmann, he laid the foundation for the firm’s expansion by creating the Bertelsmann book clubs in 1950, growing it into an international business with more than 20 million members.
The clubs allowed members to purchase books at lower prices than in bookstores, but obliged them to buy on a regular basis, thus steady revenue streams for Bertelsmann.
That money helped Bertelsmann, which now owns RTL Group and Random House, to buy publisher Gruner+Jahr and build its TV business.
Dwindling CD sales, however, and a significant fall in book club memberships have weighed, and last year led Bertelsmann to sell large parts of the business, which current CEO Hartmut Ostrowski had called the nucleus of Bertelsmann.
Bertelsmann has been controlled by the Mohn family for the past 100 years and has opted to remain private, going so far as to take on additional debt to buy out Belgian investor GBL and prevent its own public listing in 2006.
Mohn converted the family-owned company into a stock corporation in 1971, of which he became the chairman and CEO.
He stepped down as CEO at age 60, but stayed on as chairman of the board for another 10 years. He remained honorary chairman of the supervisory board and held a seat on the board of trustees of the Bertelsmann Stiftung foundation.
His second wife, Liz Mohn, and two of his children, Christoph Mohn and Brigitte Mohn, are members of the Bertelsmann supervisory board.
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