Scary news in today´s Financial Times:
Liz Mohn, head of the German dynasty that controls Bertelsmann, on Thursday night nominated board member Hartmut Ostrowski to succeed Gunter Thielen as chief executive of Europe’s largest media conglomerate…
The elevation of the two confidants of Ms Mohn has been an open secret in Gütersloh, Bertelsmann’s home town, as she has worked to increase her family’s influence and focus the print-to-TV group on its old strengths.
Ms Mohn is the second wife of Bertelsmann founder Reinhard Mohn and mother of three of his six children.
Two of her offspring have become increasingly involved in the running of the media company.
Mr Ostrowski, who has run the printing and media services division Arvato since 2002, is expected to follow the conservative strategy devised by Mr Thielen, which saw the group retreat from its former pursuit of online ventures.
“Ostrowski will cement Thielen’s strategy of turning Bertelsmann back into a solid German company with international bits, like RTL TV in Europe and Random House [books] in the US,” said one person who knows the group…
The choice of Mr Ostrowski will disappoint board member Ewald Walgenbach, who turned round Bertelsmann’s book club in the past four years and had been seen as having the right qualities to succeed Mr Thielen.
Although RTL still makes most of the profits, Mr Ostrowski has turned Arvato into Bertelsmann’s growth engine by diversifying from the traditional printing business into fixing mobile phones and customer relationship management services.
That experience could fit well with Mr Thielen’s plans to gingerly expand the group’s online offerings on a business-by-business basis – RTL and a number of Bertelsmann magazines already run user-generated websites.
Bertelsmann has shied away from big acquisitions in recent years after suffering heavy losses from digital ventures launched during the dotcom boom.
The architect of that strategy, Thomas Middelhoff, was ousted in the summer of 2002.
Yes, scary because Bertelsmann is one of the most well run media companies in the world.
And now seems to follow a very, very conservative way to confront the new media challenges.
Thomas Middelhoff was smart, charming and young, but had to deal with the Internet bubble and was fired.
Since then, Bertelsmann has lost the new media leadership that any media company needs today.
Bertelsmann looks like the big boys in Detroit.
Still big but, more and more, with no plans, leaders and big ideas for the future.
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