The ousted chief executive of Bertelsmann said Tuesday that he had wanted its controlling family to loosen its grip, suggesting that the firm that he turned into an international heavyweight will fall away if it clings to its provincial roots.
The comments by Thomas Middelhoff, his first in public since his removal Sunday, appeared to confirm reports that the Mohn family has bridled at his idea for them to sell some of their shares on the stock market.
Speaking on German television, Middelhoff said one possibility for the German company was to maintain its "strong cultural ties" to its Gutersloh base and remain three-quarters controlled by the family.
An existing plan to allow a minority shareholder to list up to 25 percent of Bertelsmann's shares in 2005 to become Europe's largest listed media company would not dilute their control.
But Middelhoff said he had a more ambitious vision -- one which observors said must have alarmed many in the 167-year-old firm.
"Even if today the stock market climate is bad, the management must have the flexibility to develop this company further with a stock listing in the medium and long term," Middelhoff said. "Otherwise, a big firm like Bertelsmann can hardly stay competitive internationally in the size-class where it currently finds itself."
Under Middelhoff, 49, Bertelsmann jostled with the likes of AOL Time Warner and Vivendi, taking over US book giant Random House and Europe's No. 1 broadcaster, RTL. He also tried to build music publisher BMG into the world's biggest.
He took it into an array of Internet-connected ventures, from dormant music-exchange Napster to e-retailing projects such as Barnes&Noble.com and BOL.com.
But his aggressive dealmaking, insistence on taking the company public and plans to sell traditional divisions saw a management exodus at a firm previously known for the autonomy of its far-flung units and careful treatment of its employees.
German media have speculated that new CEO Deiter Thielen will turn back the clock, and reports said Tuesday that he will consider reversing some of Middelhoff's riskier moves.
Napster, whose assets Bertelsmann agreed to buy in bankruptcy proceedings, is off-line while Bertelsmann seeks a way to revive it as a subscription service. But analysts say it is being overtaken by competing music-distribution models, and it faces lawsuits from BMG's rivals who say it pirated their music.
Company officials declined comment Tuesday, but a member of the Mohn family said in a newspaper interview that Thielen should not be written off as an old-economy executive, even though he comes from its more traditional printing division, Arvato.
"Thielen is being underestimated," said Christoph Mohn, who heads internet portal Lycos Europe. "He has built a highly modern and very profitable service branch from the traditional printing business."
Arvato reflects the company's origins as a printer of religious books, but also owns e-commerce firm Pixelpark and produces CD-ROMs.
Middelhoff said he would take a long vacation in France to consider whether his career would continue outside Germany, "possibly on another continent."
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday inaugurated the Danjiang Bridge across the Tamsui River in New Taipei City, saying that the structure would be an architectural icon and traffic artery for Taiwan. Feted as a major engineering achievement, the Danjiang Bridge is 920m long, 211m tall at the top of its pylon, and is the longest single-pylon asymmetric cable-stayed bridge in the world, the government’s Web site for the structure said. It was designed by late Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. The structure, with a maximum deck of 70m, accommodates road and light rail traffic, and affords a 200m navigation channel for boats,
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
RSS