The corporate restructuring at Axel Springer is picking up speed. As the industry service "horizon" reports, the editors of "Bild" and "Bild am Sonntag" ("BamS") are to merge. The employees of the media company are to be informed on Monday about these and other drastic measures, they say.
So far "Bild" and "BamS" are two independent editors. In the future, however, they obviously do not want to afford fully self-sufficient teams anymore. CEO Matthias Döpfner had already hinted in the past that the two editorial offices should be brought closer together. According to "horizon", the merger with the current "image" boss Julian Reichelt is to be held as chairman of the editor-in-chief.
Despite closer cooperation, the "Bild am Sonntag" should be continued as an independent brand. It is unclear, however, what will become of the editor-in-chief Marion Horn. She is the first woman to lead the tabloid for the last six years, which she recently celebrated in a Twitter message. According to Horizon, they and Reichelt do not get along very well, fueling speculation about their possible departure.
"Bild am Sonntag" should remain an independent brand
The background of the editorial consolidation are savings measures at Axel Springer with its approximately 16,000 employees worldwide. The Berliner Medienhaus sees its future above all in digital business fields. CEO Döpfner dreams of becoming the global market leader as a digital company. The print and print business is causing problems.
Today, the company has two pillars: the classic news business in print and online (News Media) and digital classifieds (Classifieds Media). In addition to the "Bild" group and the "Welt" brands, the first segment also includes pure online publications such as "Business Insider" or the European offshoot of the US media "Politico". Revenue in the digital classifieds business comes from companies such as the Stepstone job board or real estate platforms such as Immowelt.de.
Sales in the news business are falling
The News Media division, with sales of € 685.9 million in the first half of 2019, is still the main source of income, followed by classifieds with € 613.6 million. However, sales in the news business have been declining for years. Especially in the print sector. In the first half of 2019, the minus was around six percent. Only in Germany, sales were even reduced by eight percent.
For this reason, years ago Springer had cleaned up its portfolio with regional newspapers and various magazines and invested in online companies such as Stepstone. But because Springer is a listed company, such restructuring and the associated reduction in staff could only be carried out "piecemeal", said Döpfner recently in an interview with the "Süddeutsche Zeitung". Otherwise, the costs would have burdened the quarterly result too much and pushed down the stock price.
The role of the financial investor KKR
In the future, the company will have to take no more consideration, because Springer is to disappear after 35 years from the stock market. That is when the antitrust authorities approve the entry of US financial investor Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR). The offers about 2.9 billion euros for 42.5 percent of the Group. He added another 1.04 percent to the market. The remaining percentages are distributed among the publisher's widow Friede Springer (42.6 percent), grandson of Axel Springer and CEO Döpfner (2.8 percent). The transaction is expected to be completed by the end of 2019 or early 2020.