Mathias Döpfner: Springer board members are among the best paid executives in the country

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Bonus king:

Springer CEO

waves a special payment in the mid double-digit million range

Photo: Bernd von Jutrczenka / Getty Images

The media group Springer has promised its board of directors around the chairman

(59) bonuses totaling up to 88.8 million euros.

This is reported by the industry magazine "Kress Pro".

The basis is a "share-based payment" agreed in 2016 in addition to the basic salary.

This should be measured by the Springer share price and the group's dividend payments.

The group published details of the performance-related special payments in its annual report for 2020, which was published in the Federal Gazette at the end of last year.

Springer publishes newspapers ("Bild", "Welt"), maintains TV channels such as Welt, formerly N24, and operates Internet portals such as Stepstone or Immowelt.

In 2020, the group had sales of almost three billion euros.

With their bonus entitlements, Döpfner and his fellow board members

(51) and

(53) are potentially among the best-paid managers in the country.

Even at large corporations such as Daimler, Adidas or Bertelsmann, which generate many times the sales of Springer, the remuneration of the board of directors, including possible bonuses, is well below the sums that the Springer bosses can pocket.

Adidas boss

(59) received remuneration of 3.7 million euros including stock options for 2020.

His counterpart at Daimler,

(52), earned a total annual salary of 5.9 million euros in 2020.

At Bertelsmann, the four-member board around CEO

(56) received a total of 28 million euros for the same year.

Springer board member

(48), the fourth member of the current top quartet, does not share in the windfall.

She was only promoted to the board in 2018.

The group has set up a "virtual stock option plan" for Caspar, for which Springer set aside 1.6 million euros at the end of 2020 - compared to the possible claims of their colleagues, however, this is a rather modest sum.

The billion dollar gift from the publisher

(59), who left the group in 2020

, shows the dimensions that remuneration can achieve in the top floor at Springer .

He received a bonus of 16.4 million euros for 2020.

If he hadn't been eliminated in the course of the year, Wiele could have gotten even 1.3 million euros more.

The media manager, who was on the Springer board for almost two decades, is to be elected chairman of the supervisory board of the media group ProSiebenSat.1 in May.

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• Andreas Wiele: Former Springer board member to become head of the supervisory board at ProSiebenSat.1

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Wiele moved from Axel Springer to Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) as Senior Advisor in 2020.

The four board members also have the financial investor to thank for the fact that their bonus claims could arise at all.

Because the special payments from the "Long-Term Incentive Plan" (LTIP) only became eligible for allocation when the Springer share price jumped, which was triggered by KKR's takeover bid in 2019.

Since then, KKR has held almost half of the Berlin media group.

In the spring of 2020, the owners took Axel Springer off the stock exchange.

For the period 2016 to 2020, the Springer Executive Boards have acquired bonus entitlements of 88.8 million euros.

According to the annual report, the first half of the sum should be paid out in 2021. The second half should follow two years later.

The other half of Axel Springer SE belongs to the publisher

(79), widow of the company founder Axel Caesar Springer (1912 to 1985) and – Döpfner.

Friede Springer has passed almost a quarter of the shares in Axel Springer as well as her own voting rights to her long-standing CEO in several steps.

KKR paid almost three billion euros for the takeover of 42.5 percent of Axel Springer SE.

Döpfner's share should therefore be worth more than 1.5 billion euros.

With an estimated fortune of four billion euros, Döpfner, together with Friede Springer, ranks 50th in the current list of the 500 richest Germans, which manager magazin has compiled annually for two decades.

In a giving mood:

publisher

gave her CEO shares in the billions

Photo: Markus Schreiber/ AP

Döpfner recently had to accept clear criticism from some industry colleagues.

In October, the group dismissed

(41), "Bild" editor-in-chief and managing director of the "Bild" group, after allegations of abuse of power.

Although Reichelt admitted that private and professional relationships were mixed up, he otherwise denied any wrongdoing.

The "Financial Times" recently reported that the group management around Döpfner had known about the allegations against Reichelt much longer than previously known and even tried to cover them up.

Axel Springer denies that.

Döpfner's handling of the Reichelt case, for example, was used by the Funke media group ("Waz", "Hörzu") to demand the resignation of the head of Axel Springer from the office of President of the Federal Association of Digital Publishers and Newspaper Publishers (BDZV), which Döpfner has held since 2016 holds.

At a delegates' meeting of the BDZV on Monday, which was also attended by the bosses of several large publishing houses, there was hardly any support for a revolt against the Springer boss.

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