Sales 2023: €3.600 billion

Overview

A family-owned business based in Stuttgart, the Georg von Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (also known as the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group) owns one of Germany's largest publishing portfolios. The holding company operates in over 100 countries and publishes in the information, education, and entertainment sectors.

An updated company profile will be published shortly.

General Information

Headquarters
Georg von Holtzbrinck GmbH & Co. KG
Gänsheidestraße 26
70184 Stuttgart
Germany
Telephone: 0049 711 2150-0
Internet: www.holtzbrinck.com 

Branches of trade: Magazines, newspapers, book publishers, TV production, internet services, market research
Legal form: GmbH
Financial year: 01.01. – 31.12.
Founding year: German publishing expedition (1936), founding year of the Holtzbrinck Holding (1971)

Basic economic data

	2023	2022
Sales (in million €)	3.600	3.600
Employees	5.324	5.324

Executives and Directors

Management/Board of Directors (key positions):

• Dr. Stefan von Holtzbrinck, Chairman of the Management Board
• Björn Waldow, Commercial Managing Director
• Filmon Zerai, Managing Director Operations
• Diana Baumhauer, SVP HR
• Claus-Peter Gosselke, SVP Tax & Accounting
• Dr. Sabine Knauer, SVP Legal
• Rolf Landkammer, SVP Group Finance
• Martin Strempel, SVP Group Controlling
• Cathrin Vischer, SVP HR

Supervisory Board:

• Bernd Hirsch, Chairman
• Dr. Hagen Duenbostel
• Dr. Florian Heinemann
• Julia Jäkel
• Christiane Schoeller

History

In 1936, book salesman Georg von Holtzbrinck, a sensual descendant of a Westphalian noble family, founded the Deutsche Verlagsexpedition (German Publishing Expedition) together with his friend Wilhelm Schlösser. The distribution company became the nucleus of a rapidly expanding media company. Holtzbrinck owed this success in part to his good relations with the Nazi Party, wrote the US magazine "Vanity Fair" in 1997. In 1943, Holtzbrinck acquired the Wiesbaden-based publishing house "Deutsche Volksbücher," which the Allies licensed in 1946. After the war, Holtzbrinck came up with the idea of founding a book club for book-hungry Germans. In 1948, the Stuttgart House Library was founded, and later the German Book Association (1959), the German House Library (1960), and the German Book Club (1966) were acquired. Book clubs remained the company's core business for four decades. To hedge his bets, however, Holtzbrinck is increasingly acting as a publisher, buying into newspapers and magazines. Holtzbrinck, a former law student, is particularly interested in book publishing.

When the publishing founder died in 1983, his eldest son, Dieter, had already been working for the company for three years as managing director (at Handelsblatt). The son quickly earned respect within the company when he took over leadership after his father's death and pushed ahead with the radical restructuring of the company. This included the previously avoided expansion into international markets (foreign share in 2001: 40% of sales). In 1986, Holtzbrinck acquired the book publishing company in the USA. Henry Holt and the “Scientific American Group”, in 1994 the prestigious New York book house Farrar, Straus & Giroux, in 1995 for just under 600 million DM a 70.8 percent share in the major British publisher MacmillanIn addition, the research institute Prognos AG in Basel acquired a majority stake.

At the same time, Holtzbrinck – initially in close alliance with Munich film dealer Leo Kirch – decided to venture into electronic media. In 1983, Holtzbrinck became a founding partner of the TV station Sat.1, holds 151 percent of the shares there after a reorganization in 1986 and finally sells them to Kirch at the end of 1996 for just under 200 million DM. The weather and travel channel, in which Holtzbrinck held a quarter of the shares, ceased operations after a short time in 1998. In addition, the Swabian entrepreneur holds a 25 percent stake in the news channel n-tvto promote business television, and increased this share to 47%. However, in mid-2002, the Stuttgart-based group sold its shares – along with investments in twelve radio stations – to the Bertelsmann Group. (Bertelsmann in the media database).

Dieter von Holtzbrinck also bought the newspapers “Main-Post” (1992), “Tagesspiegel” in Berlin (1992), and “Trier People’s Friend” (1993). A highlight of the offensive was the purchase of the respected weekly newspaper "The time" (circulation: around 480,000) for 140 million marks from the sole shareholder Gerd Bucerius.

The acquisitions were accompanied by a significant internal restructuring: In 1989, Holtzbrinck sold the German Book Association, the former heart of the company, to Kirch for 250 million DM. The era of book clubs was over, Holtzbrinck declared, noting at the time that this also applied to Bertelsmann, which bought the book association from Kirch in 1992. As recently as the mid-1980s, book clubs had generated every second DM in the company. Holtzbrinck also divested itself of the music company Intercord, which went to EMIAnd finally, the printing companies Claussen & Bosse and Franz Spiegel Buch are also sold.

On 1 January 1999, the entrepreneur merged five of his own publishing houses with seven publishing houses of the Catholic Weltbild Group from Augsburg into a joint publishing group, which was known as Droemer Knaur is registered.

In June 2002, Holtzbrinck took over the struggling Berliner Verlag, which also included “Berlin Newspaper” owned by Gruner + Jahr. The deal, which was conducted subject to antitrust reservations, turned into a disaster for the Stuttgart-based publishing group. The Federal Cartel Office prohibited the transaction, citing Holtzbrinck's dominant market position in Berlin subscription newspapers, which would arise if the "Tagesspiegel" and "Berliner Zeitung" were published by a single company in the future. On January 14, 2003, Holtzbrinck applied to then-Minister of Economics Wolfgang Clement (SPD) for ministerial approval to circumvent the antitrust authority's veto. To obtain Clement's approval, Holtzbrinck proposed a foundation model. Under this model, the editorial staff of the "Tagesspiegel" would be transferred to a company whose independence would be monitored by a nine-member board of trustees. Legally, Clement could only grant permission if "overall economic advantages" or "an overriding public interest" outweighed concerns about concentration. On May 13, Clement therefore issued an interim notice requesting Holtzbrinck to search for buyers for the "Tagesspiegel" for six weeks. If no buyer had been found, Clement could have granted permission. Shortly thereafter, the Bauer and Ippen publishing groups announced their interest in purchasing the newspaper. In September 2003, the Holtzbrinck Group sold the "Tagesspiegel" to its former manager, Pierre Gerckens, at a preferential price (€10 million was mentioned, but the group did not comment on this). After that, the way seemed clear for the takeover of the "Berliner Zeitung," but the Federal Cartel Office blocked this for the second time in February 2004, arguing that the "Tagesspiegel" shares sold to Gerckens were still attributable to the group. Holtzbrinck subsequently filed a lawsuit against the Federal Cartel Office's decision before the Düsseldorf Higher Regional Court and the Federal Court of Justice, but without success. As a consequence, in October 2005 the group sold the Berliner Verlag to an Anglo-American investor consortium (VSS) and the Mecom Group. The British David Montgomery, CEO of the Mecom Group, has since been heading the Berlin publishing house as Chairman of the Supervisory Board.

Company founder Georg von Holtzbrinck in the Third Reich

After ten years of research, journalist Thomas Garke-Rothbart presented his academic study on the company's roots in November 2008, which concerns its founder and namesake, Georg von Holtzbrinck, and his time during the Nazi era. The study was titled "...vital for our company..." and was published by KG Saur-Verlag. Garke-Rothbart began the project after the US magazine "Vanity Fair" printed the Nazi party card of publisher Georg von Holtzbrinck's founder in 1998 and published a report on his "dark past." Officially, the publishing house's history only begins in 1948. When Garke-Rothbart, to the surprise of the publishing family, discovered private documents in a public archive, the family agreed to support him by making files available, facilitating contact with contemporary witnesses and archives, and covering part of the research costs.

Historian Wolfgang Benz wrote in Holtzbrinck's own Tagesspiegel that the study was characterized by "meticulous research." He praised the author's avoidance of moral accusations. It was "not an elegant presentation," but it was "highly welcome and insightful," Benz judged. He noted that Georg von Holtzbrinck was "an important player" in the history of the book trade and publishing industry during the Third Reich. He was a member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) but did not appear as a fanatical Nazi.

Benz sums up: "The story of the entrepreneur Georg von Holtzbrinck in the Third Reich is as unspectacular as it is depressing. He was no fanatical ideologue, no malicious anti-Semite, no wild militarist; he simply adapted. For the sake of business success. If he perhaps disagreed with the official line at one time, he didn't let anyone notice. But that is what made the Nazi regime successful—the adaptability, the opportunism, the silence of so many." After the war, he lamented the three lost years due to his denazification proceedings, which classified him as a fellow traveler.

"To our great regret," the children Monika Schoeller von Holtzbrinck, Dieter, and Stefan von Holtzbrinck said in a statement, "the Nazi regime has penetrated all areas of our father's life and work, and thus also his publishing activities." The new book on Georg von Holtzbrinck's publishing role in the Third Reich, they continue, "makes known a previously largely unknown part of German book trade history during the Nazi era. In the interest of the desired, unreserved clarification, all materials in the possession of the family and the company were made available, and academic work was supported. In total, nearly thirty archives between Washington and Moscow were opened up, and all documents discovered are available for further research."

Dieter von Holtzbrinck Media

In 2006, Dieter von Holtzbrinck stepped down from the supervisory board and intended to concentrate entirely on building a foundation into which he would contribute his wealth. From then on, the company and its 15,000-odd employees were managed by his sister, Monika Schoeller, and his half-brother, Stefan von Holtzbrinck, who were required to pay their brother approximately 30 million euros annually. They were apparently no longer able to do this: Due to the economic crisis, the company had to make write-downs of 35 million euros in 2008.

On March 26, 2009, the two half-brothers Stefan and Dieter von Holtzbrinck surprised the public with the news that Dieter would be returning to the publishing business on June 1. The comeback – according to media scientist Horst Röper, a "very unusual and strange process" (Stuttgarter Nachrichten) – amounted to a payment in kind: A purchase price was not disclosed, but Dieter von Holtzbrinck took over the Handelsblatt Group, including Handelsblatt and the magazine Wirtschaftswoche, as well as the Tagesspiegel Group in Berlin and 50 percent of ZEIT. However, from some point between 2011 and 2021, Dieter von Holtzbrinck intends to devote himself entirely to his foundation, he said in a interview with the Handelsblatt.

management

With its more than 50 subsidiaries, the parent company has remained a relatively anonymous entity. It does not pursue its own branding, and attempts are made to avoid attracting unnecessary attention. The corporate philosophy is based on quality, decentralization, and individuality. The publishing group is divided into four business divisions: general interest publishing, education and science, newspapers and business information, and electronic media and services. Holtzbrinck holds a leading position among certain target groups, such as scientists and businesspeople. With its renowned book publishing companies, the Swabian group can easily compete with its more economically powerful rival Bertelsmann. "The others may be bigger, but we have Fischer and Rowohlt," company founder Georg von Holtzbrinck is said to have said on his deathbed. In addition, there are a number of important regional newspapers, the "Tagesspiegel" in Berlin, and the well-known weekly "Die Zeit."

Since the surprise departure of Dieter von Holtzbrinck, the "silent tycoon," as shareholder and chairman of the supervisory board at the end of June 2006, Stefan von Holtzbrinck has held the reins of the company firmly in his hands. Dieter, who had led the group for 20 years, based his planning and investment projections on a long-term horizon of at least ten years. His motto was "Company before family," which required at least 80% of profits to be reinvested in the company. He deliberately acquired regional newspapers that were experiencing difficulties during the necessary generational transition and where several family branches were fighting over leadership. Dieter believed that the best approach was to make targeted acquisitions of distressed companies that needed to be restructured.
Stefan intends to continue his brother Dieter's moderating approach to company management and his focus on long-term goals. The relationship between Dieter and Stefan von Holtzbrinck is said to have become increasingly strained. While his older stepbrother occasionally advised greater caution, Stefan von Holtzbrinck is now increasingly focusing on economic expansion beyond the core business. Stefan is devoting himself to expanding the digital division. He envisions that around a quarter of total revenue will be generated online by 2011. Through long-term, collaborative partnerships, the publishing group aims to secure its future as a competitive "medium-sized company" (according to the group's information). Stefan manages his empire through a holding company that is relatively weakly staffed with only around 70 employees. He is a big believer in the management philosophy of "controlling through non-controlling." He admitted in an interview with the "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" that corporate thinking is "alien" to him. The "intellectual and creative work" of the editors and publishers in his company contradicts this. Every employee has the "greatest possible freedom to pursue their ideas and business: In our company, you will find many political facets." Dieter von Holtzbrinck once declared that it was no longer appropriate to prescribe a precise content line: What matters is the "social obligation of journalists," they must fairly present complex relationships from many perspectives. He saw himself as a "sparring partner for the editors-in-chief." The unassuming publishing house probably prefers a distinctly liberal-conservative tone. Political affinity with the CDU has been evident in the past in several personal matters, such as the partnership with the late Kohl government spokesman and former "Zeit" editor Diether Stolze, or the temporarily close alliance with Kohl's friend Kirch over the television channel Sat.1. (From 1990 to 1992, Stefan von Holtzbrinck also worked as an assistant to the management of the Kirch Group in Munich.) The Holtzbrinck family, which maintains close ties to Israel through the Jerusalem Foundation, has always avoided open partisanship.

For a long time, the strong man in the background was Austrian Michael Grabner, a close confidant of Dieter von Holtzbrinck, who, for example, personally took over the restructuring of the Handelsblatt Group in Düsseldorf. In March 2007 – a year earlier than planned – he joined the shareholders' committee of Austria's largest publishing group. “Mediaprint”However, Stefan von Holtzbrinck isn't considering an abrupt change in strategy. CFO Dr. Jochen Gutbrod, who previously worked at Holtzbrinck Digital, will take over the business information division.

The shares of the Holtzbrinck Publishing Group are shared by siblings Monika Schoeller and Stefan von Holtzbrinck, each with a 50% stake. Dieter von Holtzbrinck has gradually transferred his shares to a non-profit foundation since 2006.

Business segments

Book: Trade publishing is the oldest business area of the Holtzbrinck Group. Today, Holtzbrinck generates over 500 million euros annually with publishers such as S. Fischer (Publishing Director: Monika Schoeller), Rowohlt (Alexander Fest), Kiepen-heuer & Witsch (Helge Malchow) and Henry Holt.

Science and Education: The business division includes “Scientific American” with its offshoot “Spektrum der Wissenschaft” (Heidelberg), the school book publishers Schroedel (Hanover) and Diesterweg (Frankfurt) and especially the British Macmillan Education Group, which is expanding rapidly in India and China. Nature Publishing Group, which publishes the renowned scientific journal "Nature" and is considered the leading medium of scientific journalism for biologists, physicians, and physicists. Other scientific publishers include Palgrave MacMillan, Digital Science/Digital Education, and the US college publisher Macmillan New Ventures. At the beginning of 2015, these publishers were merged as part of a Joint ventures with the financial investor BC Partners (which has controlled Germany's largest scientific publisher, Springer Science, since 2013). Holtzbrinck now controls 53 percent of the new publishing giant.

Holtzbrinck Media: Holtzbrinck owns two national daily newspapers, the “Tagesspiegel” in Berlin (published by Giovanni di Lorenzo and Sebastian Turner, who is close to the CDU, which also holds 20 percent of the shares in the Tagesspiegel Group) and the weekly newspaper "Die Zeit" in Hamburg. According to critics, the journalistic independence of the "Tagesspiegel" suffers from its proximity to the Berlin lobbying scene, which publisher Turner sought out due to lucrative advertising partnerships. Cicero report revealed, the paper, which is actually considered to be the last national quality newspaper in Berlin, sold speaking time to lobbyists at the in-house “Agenda 2015 Conference.

The publishing company is increasingly withdrawing from the regional newspaper segment. In 2012, heir Stefan von Holtzbrinck announced the sale of Saarbrücker Zeitungs Verlags und Druckerei GmbH—including its subsidiaries "Lausitzer Rundschau" (Cottbus) and "Trierischer Volksfreund," as well as "Südkurier" (Konstanz) and "Main-Post" (Würzburg)—to the Society for Civic Education Saar (GSB). The sale is expected to be completed by 2014.

Holtzbrinck is number one in German business journalism – thanks to the Düsseldorf Handelsblatt Group ("Handelsblatt," "Wirtschaftswoche," "VDI-Nachrichten," and several trade publications). The newspaper "Euro," which had merged with "DM," was sold. The group also holds a stake in the European edition of the business daily Wall Street JournalThe journalistic integrity of the “Handelsblatt” was undermined by the scandal uncovered by W&V in March 2014. Suspicion of surreptitious advertising damaged. The accusation: the advertising department is selling the portraits of prominent Handelsblatt readers, which regularly appear on page 3, for 5,000 euros.

Electronic media: Two subsidiaries implement the overall strategy for the digital business area: Holtzbrinck Ventures, and Holtzbrinck Digital Strategy (formerly Holzbrinck Networks).
Founded in 2000, Holtzbrinck Ventures GmbH invests in young companies with venture capital. Among others, the online network “StudiVz”, the marketplace for craft and service auctions “My Hammer” and the largest online dating agency in the German-speaking region “Parship” acquired. In the portfolio since 2012: DropGifts, a portal for online vouchers and musicplayer, a tool for creating online music playlists, as well as investments in Zalando and eDarling.

Holtzbrinck Digital Strategy GmbH is responsible for strategic investments. Long-term investments are sought in the areas of e-commerce, online portals, online subscriptions, and e-travel. The company includes, for example, the book distribution company “buecher.de” and the dating portal Parship.

Holtzbrinck expected good revenue from targeted advertising from StudiVZ, which, according to its own figures, reached 2.5 million students. StudiVZ's internationalization posed problems: Foreign branches of StudiVZ struggled to gain a foothold in Spain and Italy right from the start. At the end of 2008, the final closure of the platforms studiQG (France), studiLN (Italy), estudiLN (Spain), and studentIX (Poland) was announced. After the portal lost 80 percent of its users to competitor Facebook, Holtzbrinck Publishing decided on a strategic realignment. The VZ networks were renamed "Poolworks" and "Idpool" respectively in July 2012 and sold to the investment firm Vert Capital the following September.

Initially, there was another subsidiary: Holtzbrinck eLab. It primarily developed its own internet and mobile applications and only occasionally participated in externally created business models, including the acquired IT information service "Golem.de" and the health portal "NetDoktor.de" (both in July 2007). Examples of in-house developed business ideas included "autoplenum.de," an information and review platform for everything automotive, and Vertical Commerce GmbH, which developed e-commerce platforms. After eLab's demise in 2010, individual parts of eLab continued to operate as part of Holtzbrinck Digital.

Services: Following the sale of numerous radio holdings and its 47 percent stake in the news channel n-tv  nor the TV production company AVE, which owns the companies Spektrum TV and Zeit TV. This company produces, among other things, political talk shows. In the long term, AVE could be developed into the publishing group's specialist for internet and mobile television. Since December 2006, the group has also held 40.3% of the shares in Gute Laune TV, a channel focusing on German pop music. 

Current developments

Success with the weekly newspaper “Die Zeit”

Positive news came from Hamburg at the beginning of 2014, where the ZEIT publishing house reported an increase in sales of 8.7 percent to 167 million euros for the 2013 financial year. Sales have thus increased by more than doubledThe printed edition of ZEIT remains one of the few newspapers that has been able to increase its circulation in recent years (an average of 512,000 copies sold weekly in 2013 even meant a Sales record). Critics criticize However, the freelance journalists working for ZEIT are not adequately involved in the success and extremely low fees would get.

digital strategy

Numerous complete or partial acquisitions of internet companies (including myphotobook.de, gutefrage.net, MeinAuto.de, GameDuell) demonstrate that the group intends to actively and early shape the generally advancing digitalization. That not every project can succeed became clear in February of the crisis year of 2009, when the news portal Zoomer.de was closed after a sharp drop in visitor numbers. However, the recent catastrophic decline of the expensively acquired VZ networks (see Business Areas) has not deterred Holtzbrinck Ventures from further investments. In June 2012, for example, the company acquired a stake in the men's styling portal "Paul Secret." However, users of Holtzbrinck's digital journalistic offerings have to pay a high price for free website visits. For example, the online offering of the "Tagesspiegel" is filled with meaningless advertising and annoying click walls. virtually paved.

Meanwhile, the traditional book business continues to expand. Holtzbrinck wants to 50 percent share in the publishing house Droemer Knaur from the Weltbild Group. Holtzbrinck is also apparently one of the Interested parties in the insolvent bookstore chain Weltbild, for which the company would probably have to pay between 50 and 70 million euros.