Bertelsmann A.G.

Type: Private Company
Address: Carl-Bertelsmann-Strasse 270, Gutersloh, D-33311, Germany
Telephone: (+49) 5241-80-0
Fax: (+49) 5241-80-9662
Web: http://www.bertelsmann.de
Employees: 97,132
Sales: EUR 19.3 billion (2006)
Incorporated: 1835 as Bertelsmann Verlag
NAIC: 511130 Book Publishers; 334612 Prerecorded Compact Disc (Except Software), Tape, and Record Reproducing; 511120 Periodical Publishers; 512210 Record Production; 515120 Television Broadcasting; 454110 Mail-Order Houses; 519190 All Other Information Services
SIC: 2731 Book Publishing; 3652 Prerecorded Records & Tapes; 2721 Periodicals; 4833 Television Broadcasting Stations

Bertelsmann A.G. is one of the world's largest media conglomerates, encompassing subsidiaries that span music, broadcasting, print, and the Internet. With operations in more than 63 countries, primarily in Europe and North America, Bertelsmann is active in these main areas: television and radio; magazine and newspaper; book publishers; book and music clubs; print and media services; and music labels. During the new century, an international media and communications services division, Arvato, began to produce significant growth for the company. Well-known operations include magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr, book publisher Random House, jointly owned Sony BMG Music Entertainment, and Europe's top broadcasting and production company, RLT Group. Bertelsmann remains in the hands of the Mohn family and the Bertelsmann Foundation.

19th-Century Origins

The company was founded as a family business in the middle of the 19th century and had grown to a considerable size before World War II. The significant expansion phase of the company, however, only began after the German currency reform of 1948, when Reinhard Mohn succeeded with the Bertelsmann book club (the Lesering) in introducing a revolutionary form of direct sales to the traditional German publishing market. Bertelsmann grew into an international force on the back of this great success. In 2001, 17.3 percent of Bertelsmann's share capital was in the hands of the Mohn family; 25.1 percent was held by Belgian financier Albert Frere's Groupe Bruxelles Lambert; and 57.6 percent of the capital stock was held by the Bertelsmann Foundation, established in 1977 by Reinhard Mohn with the intention to take over the Mohn family's share in Bertelsmann and appoint the company's management. The family forestalled a potential public offering by buying back, in 2006, the stock held by Groupe Bruxelles Lambert.

Although a multiple media giant by the turn of the 21st century, the company began in 1835 as a small publisher of evangelical hymnbooks and devotional pamphlets in Pietist eastern Westphalia, where its headquarters have remained, resisting any suggestions of transferring to Hamburg or Munich. The founder of the company was Carl Bertelsmann, who was born in Gutersloh in 1791, two years after the French Revolution. His father died before he was two years old. His mother was to find him an apprenticeship in a bookbinder's business as she had done for his elder brother. However, to avoid conscription into Napoleon's Russian army, Carl Bertelsmann went traveling along the route from Berlin to Upper Silesia. After Napoleon's defeat and exile, Carl Bertelsmann returned to his hometown in 1815, then upon his brother's death in 1819, was able to set up his own bookbinder shop in his hometown.

"The little Bertelsmann from Gutersloh," as he was known in the area, soon found a place in the Pietist movement that shaped the eastern Westphalian community, and discovered that it particularly needed hymnbooks for its services. Gradually Bertelsmann's bookbinding business became a bookprinting business as well, and then developed into a full publishing house. Bertelsmann dedicated himself to working industriously for his company, which, while small, expanded rapidly. By the time of his death, it employed 14 people.

When Carl Bertelsmann died in 1850, he left behind a wife and son and a considerable fortune. He had laid the foundations for the company's subsequent development, but he was not there to witness the success of the firm's bestseller, the Missionsharfe (Missionary Harp), a hymnbook of which two million copies were printed. The first edition appeared in 1853. By this time Bertelsmann was publishing not only Christian literature, but also historical and philological books, as well as novels. It ran its own printing press as before. Heinrich Bertelsmann, who inherited the business from his father, was able, as a result, to build on a very wide foundation that prevented his company from remaining a small publisher of denominational literature.

The printing and publishing house grew considerably in the second generation, thanks in part to the acquisition of other publishing houses that could not hold their own against competition in the market. This tradition of buying weaker competitors to modernize them and thus make them competitive was a policy Bertelsmann would still pursue more than a century in the future. By the time Heinrich Bertelsmann died in 1887, his 60 employees had moved into a brand-new building.

The company consequently came under the ownership of the Mohn family in its third generation, after Heinrich Bertelsmann's only child, Friederike Bertelsmann, married Johannes Mohn in 1881. Johannes Mohn was a minister's son from the Westerwald who had learned about the book trade under Heinrich Bertelsmann. Although without personal means and an outsider in Gutersloh, Mohn immediately took on the responsibilities of the business after his father-in-law's death, showing considerable talent in its management. In particular, he expanded the printing side so that book production could be increased steadily without incurring outside costs.

For this conservative company, with its strong allegiance to throne and church, the German defeat in World War I and the consequent revolution, bringing about the kaiser's abdication, was a painful break with the past. Disheartened by events, the 65-year-old Johannes Mohn passed on the responsibility for the business to his son Heinrich, only 26 years old at the time. Like his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father before him, Heinrich Mohn had had the best possible theoretical and practical training for his career as a publisher. Bad health and hard times would, however, prevent him from enjoying his position to the full.

Surviving World War II

Before the war, Johannes Mohn had a taxable income of 100,000 marks a year. He was a millionaire. Despite the family wealth, the Gutersloh printing and publishing house was almost forced to close, not long after Heinrich Mohn had taken it over, because of the effects of galloping inflation in Germany in 1923. For the first time in the company's history, no new employees were taken on, while valued staff had to be laid off. Scarcely had this crisis been overcome when an even greater world economic crisis broke out in 1930.

Heinrich Mohn countered these difficulties and the Third Reich with the help of his Christian convictions. Like his predecessors he was extremely close to the Evangelical Church and in particular to the part of that church, the Bekennende Kirche, or German Confessional Church, which stood by its faith in God in opposition to Adolf Hitler. At the same time Mohn was successfully trading with the German air force, which he supplied with millions of inexpensive books and pamphlets. When World War II began in 1939, roughly 400 printers, typesetters, and publishers worked for Bertelsmann in Gutersloh. The company had a turnover of 8.1 million reichsmarks in 1941 and by this time had far outstripped its German competitors.

The Nazi authorities, however, disapproved of the company's publication of religious texts and after the war began, Mohn's right to print these works was removed. His printing works were provided with less and less paper by the authorities, making it increasingly difficult to operate. When the British forces bombed Gutersloh in March 1945, most of the company's buildings were destroyed. Although a few of the expensive printing machines remained intact so that the business was able to continue, the company's future looked uncertain because Heinrich Mohn's health was failing.

Good fortune came to Bertelsmann's aid, when Reinhard Mohn returned home from a prisoner-of-war camp earlier than his elder but less-gifted brother, Sigbert Mohn. Neither was to have inherited the company originally, but when the eldest of the four brothers was killed on the sixth day of the war, the position fell to Sigbert. Since Sigbert returned from the Russian prisoner-of-war camp later in 1949, his younger brother Reinhard took charge of affairs in Gutersloh in 1947.

Following his school-leaving exams at the Evangelical Foundation Grammar School in Gutersloh, Reinhard Mohn had wanted to become an aeronautical engineer, but when the war broke out, he was called up to join the German Africa Corps. After Reinhard was injured, he was taken prisoner by American troops.

Upon his return to Gutersloh, Reinhard Mohn took the company helm with determination. When the West Germans suddenly stopped buying books after Germany's adoption of the deutsche mark in 1948, the young publisher made a daring decision. Instead of hoping for better times like the other publishers of the day, in 1950 he invited the West German retail booksellers to form the Lesering together with Bertelsmann. For a small sum, any reader could become a member of this book club. In return, the reader would receive a certain number of books from C. Bertelsmann Verlag every year.

There had already been book clubs in Germany. What was new about the Bertelsmann Lesering, however, was that the "corner bookshops" were made partners by the publishing house. With this type of direct sales the bookshops also profited, whereas previous book clubs had only created undesirable competition. Nevertheless, there were still those who were critical. Many bookshop owners who did not acquire any Lesering members and consequently did not benefit from the club felt threatened. They were afraid that the Bertelsmann Lesering would take away their customers, but these fears proved to be exaggerated. In fact, the Bertelsmann Lesering won many people over to buying books who previously had not dared to go into bookshops for fear of their lack of education being exposed.

The Bertelsmann Lesering proved highly successful. It gave the Gutersloh printing and publishing house two decisive advantages over its competitors: a certain guarantee of purchases of its own books and the high-capacity use of its printing presses. These two factors combined to make Bertelsmann's turnover soar in the 1950s. Company turnover doubled each year between 1951 and 1953, going from DEM 7 million to DEM 30 million. This was a far greater turnover than that of any other book publisher in West Germany. In 1956-57, Bertelsmann was to break the DEM 100 million barrier. By 1973, Reinhard Mohn saw the figure reach DEM 1 billion. At the end of this 22-year period, the company employed a workforce of 11,000 at Gutersloh and elsewhere as opposed to the original 500 workers in 1951.

Postwar Success

The success of the company could not be explained by the Bertelsmann Lesering alone. Two additional decisions implemented by Reinhard Mohn were to be of great significance. The first, born from necessity, was to cover the company's enormous need for capital; Mohn made his employees shareholders, but without voting rights. This and other socially minded actions made the Gutersloh office, far from West Germany's glittering metropolis, a greatly envied workplace. Mohn's second decision was to branch out from books and invest in modern media such as records, magazines, and television to keep pace with changing consumer demands.

These changes all took place with breathtaking speed in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Most successful was the acquisition of a stake in the Hamburg publishing company Gruner + Jahr, which was gradually built up to a 74.9 percent shareholding in 1976. Not only did the Hamburg sister company bring in excellent results, owing to good management, but it also helped Bertelsmann achieve wider acceptance in the media world following a long period during which the Westphalian family business had been regarded as rather provincial.

The principle behind Bertelsmann's acquisitions was always the same. Reinhard Mohn bought firms that were active in related fields of business and which could be purchased relatively cheaply because of problems they could not solve themselves. He would place a couple of trusted colleagues in leading posts and leave them to work hard on their own. Delegation of responsibility and decentralization of business were his beliefs. For ambitious managers who valued a certain degree of independence, it was and remained a challenge. By 1994 Bertelsmann consisted of around 300 profit centers, which operated virtually independently from one another and were coordinated from the group's headquarters in Gutersloh.

Business Expansion Abroad

During the end of the 1960s, Bertelsmann reached the limits of its growth within the German-speaking world. Mohn decided to expand the business abroad. The first step was to introduce Bertelsmann's Lesering to Spain, with all the other sectors of operation, from the printing works to the book and magazine publishing companies, following at short intervals. As a result, turnover rose to DEM 5.5 billion by 1980 and the number of employees rose to 30,000 worldwide. Bertelsmann, transformed into a public limited company because of the colossal growth in its capital requirements, prepared to leap to the top of the media world.

In 1981 after more than 30 years at the head of the company, Mohn moved from being chairman of the company to being chairman of the supervisory board. For the first time in Bertelsmann's history, Mohn left the operational running of the company to a manager who was not a member of the family. In taking this step he instituted a ruling which he applied to all members of the board and to himself and which would become company policy at Bertelsmann: employees may not remain in their jobs past 60 years of age.

Under its new boss Dr. Mark Wossner (a former assistant to Mohn, who had made his way to the top beginning in the late 1960s in the printing and industrial plant sectors), Bertelsmann AG held the position of the leading media group in the world for a time in the mid-1980s (until Time and Warner merged in 1989). This leadership role was made possible by several acquisitions in the United States, which stretched the Westphalian company to the limits of its capacity. Between 1985 and 1986 Bertelsmann acquired the publishing group Doubleday-Dell and turned the music section of RCA into BMG (Bertelsmann Music Group). It was a massive package, for which Wossner paid more than $800 million. This show of strength catapulted Bertelsmann AG's world turnover above DEM 9 billion, with the group employing more than 40,000 people worldwide.

Bertelsmann also looked to Eastern Europe, where possibilities had been revealed by the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Eastern Bloc. With world turnover of DEM 13.3 billion in 1989, Bertelsmann AG was well equipped to make the most of these developments. In 1990 alone, Bertelsmann spent DEM 1 billion in the newly opened eastern Germany, by starting a book club, buying the largest regional newspaper there, and acquiring in a joint deal with Maxwell, the publisher of Berlin's leading daily newspaper.

The company's major moves into the U.S. market did not immediately pay off. In 1992, for instance, 21 percent of Bertelsmann's sales originated in the United States, but only about 10 percent of its profits. However, it was the acquisition of the New York publisher Random House in 1998, the largest investment in corporate history, that finally catapulted the United States into the position of being Bertelsmann's largest market, garnering 33.8 percent of the company's revenues by 2000. Random House was merged with Bertelsmann's Bantam Doubleday Dell to create the behemoth new publishing company dubbed Random House, Inc. With a stable of respected and popular authors including John Updike, Toni Morrison, Michael Crichton, and John Grisham, Random House, Inc. became the largest book publisher in the Anglophile world.

By the mid-1990s, in the area of multimedia, BMG Entertainment decided that rather than making acquisitions or developing products and services on its own, it would follow a strategy of partnering with the world's most innovative software developers. The earliest significant computer technology venture was BMG's partnership with the leading U.S. online service provider, America Online (AOL), to set up online services in Germany, France, and England. Bertelsmann financed the 50-50 venture with $100 million and also gained a 5 percent stake in AOL with an additional $50 million investment. This early bet on AOL, suggested to Bertelsmann's management board by Thomas Middelhoff, then head of corporate development, turned out to be a goldmine. It also boosted Middelhoff's reputation for forward-thinking, winning him the position of CEO of Bertelsmann in 1998. As AOL's CEO Steve Case told Business Week in November 2000, this early gamble showed Middelhoff could "provide the leadership necessary to bring Bertelsmann into the Internet Century." When AOL merged with Bertelsmann's competitor Time Warner in 2000, Bertelsmann had no choice but to cut its alliance with AOL, but the sale of its 5 percent stake in AOL and 50 percent stake in AOL Europe brought Bertelsmann more than $7 billion.

However, all was not rosy for Bertelsmann at the beginning of the new millennium. The Bertelsmann Music Group struggled despite having a banner year in 2000, with BMG artists, such as Carlos Santana, winning 24 Grammy Awards. The studio, featuring staple acts including Whitney Houston and the Dave Matthews Band, pulled in a 4.7 percent return on sales for the year. Yet with a dearth of new recordings, and a shake-up in management, BMG struggled to stay in the black. The music business in general also perceived a threat from Internet web sites that allowed users to share digital music files for free, a practice the studios perceived as copyright infringement and cutting into profits. The most successful of these sites, Napster, with over 50 million users, came specifically under fire in 2000 as five major recording studios, including Bertelsmann, sued the file-sharing upstart. In late 2000, though, Thomas Middelhoff shocked the other studios by offering Napster a $60 million "loan" to help it create a secure technology that would allow users to pay to trade music, in order to not violate copyright laws. In return, if Napster delivered, Bertelsmann would drop its lawsuit. Middelhoff told BuinessWeek Online, "If we didn't do anything, the music industry would die."

In 2001, despite the struggling BMG, the downward spiral of the popularity of its mainstay book clubs, the shakiness of various dot-com investments, and drops in print advertising in the Gruner + Jahr magazine division, Bertelsmann was not in trouble financially. The company was nearly debt-free, boasted a 15 percent sales growth in the previous year, and sat on $13 billion in cash (much from the sale of its stake in AOL), which was ripe for new investments.

In a bold move in February 2001, Bertelsmann acquired an additional 30 percent stake in RTL Group, Europe's biggest television company (with annual sales of about $4 billion), giving it a 67 percent majority stake. Acquiring the 30 percent stake from Groupe Bruxelles Lambert, Bertelsmann offered a 25 percent stake of its holdings in return. This move sent the message that Bertelsmann was prepared to deal with the repercussions of Groupe Bruxelles Lambert selling its stake in the company a few years down the line, making Bertelsmann a publicly listed company for the first time in the company's long history. By taking control of RTL, and developing a relationship with Napster, Bertelsmann was paving the way to take a major part in the future of file-sharing of TV and video content on the Internet. By reinventing itself for the digital world, Bertelsmann seemed willing to take chances to maintain and better its enviable position in the media industry.

Change of Heart

Bertelsmann engaged in an on-again off-again deal to buy Napster Inc. during 2002, with offers ranging from $5 million to $16.5 million according to the New York Times. Napster, languishing in its effort to enter into commercial service, had been replaced in the free service arena by Kazaa and Morpheus. Bertelsmann, by purchasing Napster's assets rather than merging with the company, sought to limit its copyright infringement liability but an $8 million purchase agreement succumbed to the findings of a bankruptcy court judge.

Ranked among the media giants created by an onslaught of mergers and acquisitions, Bertelsmann shared in the woes of the times. In the wake of the dot-com collapse, online ventures fell by the wayside. The task of combining old and new media created a daunting structural strain. In addition, a global economic downturn in the early 2000s drained advertising revenue as businesses pulled the plug on media spending, according to AdAgeGlobal.

At odds with the Supervisory Board in regard to the direction of the company, Chairman and CEO Thomas Middelhoff resigned in August 2002. Head of the Arvato printing and manufacturing group, Gunter Thielen, took the vacated post. According to Publishers Weekly, Thielen's game plan would include axing unprofitable businesses, reducing debt, strengthening core businesses, and promoting internal growth. Among the losing ventures in its portfolio was a 36 percent share of BN.com.

The purchase of Zomba Music dampened 2002 net profits but cost controls and improved performance among some of its divisions brightened the picture. BMG, aided by multi-platinum releases, returned a profit of $133 million versus an $84 million loss in 2001. RTL Group's cash flow and ratings, buoyed by hit Pop Idol, produced a quarter of Bertelsmann's total sales. While Random House and Gruner + Jahr both saw improvements in cash flow, DirectGroup registered losses.

Bertelsmann moved to sell its science and trade publishing unit to British-based private equity firms in 2003. The $1.2 billion deal was part of its streamlining and debt pay-down effort, according to Daily Variety. The company would also sell its share of the BN.com e-tailer, back to Barnes & Noble.

During 2004, Bertelsmann sought to pair up with Sony to create the world's second largest record company, behind Universal Music of Vivendi Universal. The 50-50 joint venture linked number three Sony with number five BMG. Jeff Leeds speculated, in the New York Times, that the combination would carry more clout in deal making with entities, such as MTV, which aired their music videos. Moreover, BMG's stream of new hits nicely dovetailed with Sony's strong library of recordings. The Sony Japanese division was not part of the deal, nor were either of their music publishing units. The proposal quickly raised objections of independent record labels, ones that lingered for several years to come.

Gruner + Jahr sold its U.S. magazines Family Circle, Parents, Child, and Fitness in 2005 to Des Moines-based Meredith Corporation. Business magazines Fast Company and Inc., two pricey 2000 acquisitions, were also up for sale. The German company was besieged by slow advertising sales and a legal wrangle with Rosie O'Donnell over Rosie, formerly McCall's. U.S. book publishing and Manhattan real estate investments had also foundered, according to the New York Times.

Turning elsewhere, Bertelsmann spent more than $3 billion on television expansion in Europe during the year. RTL, the company's largest division, along with Arvato and G+J, drove 2005 profits.

In 2006, Bertelsmann faced the likelihood of its shares going on the public market for the first time in its long history. Groupe Bruxelles Lambert had been granted the legal right to demand an offering, Mark Landler reported in May for the New York Times. The world's fourth largest media company as a public company would be required to disclose more specific financial details. Ousted CEO Thomas Middelhoff, unlike Thielen, had been a supporter of an initial public offering (IPO).

Liz Mohn, wife of Reinhard Mohn, moved quickly to forestall increased divulgence of the company's workings and weakened family control. The speed of the deal to buy back the 25 percent held by Groupe Bruxelles Lambert surprised parties outside and inside the company. However, both Bertelsmann and Groupe Bruxelles Lambert had cause to move ahead and strike an agreement, according to the New York Times. Bertelsmann's strengthened financial performance was expected to drive up the stock's asking price on the one hand. On the other, stock market uncertainty and family opposition to a pubic offering complicated the prospects of an IPO.

Bank loans to fund the buyback, which approached $6 billion, pushed up the company's debt load. In response, Bertelsmann sold the BMG music publishing operation for $2.1 billion. By purchasing the third largest player, Vivendi's Universal Music Publishing advanced to the top spot in the industry.

Prior divestments trimmed revenue from a peak of $24.3 billion in 2001 to $22.9 billion in 2005. A revenue low point was posted in 2003 at $21.5 billion. At the turn of the century Bertelsmann ranked among global media giants Time Warner and Walt Disney, but Thielen turned away from big deal growth and returned the company to a lower profile.

While the first half of 2006 produced a rise in sales, profit results were spotty. The Sony BMG Music Entertainment operating profit fell as the industry wrestled with piracy and the switch to digital distribution. Other units registered flat results. Direct Group, meanwhile, showed promise for the year, inching above the profit line. The book club unit had posted losses of $14 million in 2005. When all was said and done, for the year as a whole, the sale of assets produced a hefty boost of net profits while operating income climbed due to RTL's performance.

Gunter Thielen's long run on Bertelsmann's management board was set to be broken at year-end 2007. Hartmut Ostrowski, head of the fastest-growing Bertelsmann division, was tapped to succeed him as CEO on January 1, 2008. "Since taking charge at Arvato in 2002, Mr. Ostrowski has pushed the unit in many new directions. Many have nothing to do with media--such as a recent deal to collect taxes and perform other back-office operations for a municipal government in a rural corner of the U.K.," Mike Esterl reported for the Wall Street Journal in January 2007.

Ostrowski was most likely among those signing off on a leveraged acquisition plan, revealed in March, designed to help Bertelsmann work around its debt load induced buying limitations, according to a BusinessWeek Online article by Jack Ewing.

The move was an uncommon one for a media company: Bertelsmann, providing 50 percent of equity, and private equity arms of Morgan Stanley and Citigroup splitting the other 50 percent, to form a $1.3 billion fund. Bertelsmann planned to start with minority stakes in companies to enhance or complement existing businesses. Rival News Corp had acquired social networking site MySpace during 2006.

In April, Bertelsmann bought Time Inc.'s interest in Bookspan, a bookclub joint venture that included Book-of-the-Month Club. Doing so, the company had cornered the market on book, in addition to music and DVD, clubs in the United States.

The book club concept, while challenged by slow or no growth in the United States and in Western Europe, showed more promise elsewhere. Bertelsmann had tweaked the concept for former Soviet bloc countries and hit the jackpot in Ukraine. Furthermore, a Gruner + Jahr joint venture had found success within Asian media, rising to second place among magazine publishers in China.

Also in 2007, Bertelsmann settled with the last major record company alleging it aided Napster in copyright infringement. On the flip side, Sony BMG was among the winners in the first suit to go to trial against an individual charged with illegally downloading music. A Duluth, Minnesota, jury decided single mom Jammie Thomas should fork up nearly a quarter of a million dollars for the activity.

Principal Divisions

Random House, Inc.; Gruner + Jahr A.G.; BMG; RTL Group S.A. (Luxembourg); Arvato A.G.; DirectGroup; Sony BMG Music Entertainment (50%).

Principal Competitors

Time Warner Inc.; Axel Springer Verlag AG; The Walt Disney Company; Lagardère Active Media; Universal Music Group.

Further Reading

"Bankruptcy Judge Kills Proposed Napster Sale," Houston Chronicle, September 4, 2002, p. 8.

Barnet, Richard J., and John Cavanagh, Global Dreams: Imperial Corporations and the New World Order, New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994, p. 480.

"Bertelsmann Gets Bigger," Business Week, April 15, 1996, p. 65.

"Bertelsmann: The Media Company That Makes Murdoch's Empire Look Small," Economist, April 9, 1988.

Clark, Thomas, Sven Clausen, and James Harding, "Bertelsmann Plans Shake-up," Financial Times, June 4, 2001.

"Coming to America: The Sequel: Bertelsmann," Economist, November 16, 1991, p. 90.

Dignam, Conor, "Warning to Media Giants: Shape Up or Break Up," AdAgeGlobal, May 2002, p. 23.

Edgecliffe-Johnson, Andrew, "Sony BMG to Settle Music Publishing Dispute," Financial Times (London), October 8, 2007, p. 23.

Edmondson, Gail, and Patrick Oster, "Waltz of the Media Giants," Business Week, September 12, 1994.

Esterl, Mike, "Leading the News: Bertelsmann's Ostrowski Expected to Take Helm," Wall Street Journal (Europe), January 19, 2007, p. 3.

Ewing, Jack, "Bertelsmann: A New Net Powerhouse?" http://www.businessweek.com, November 13, 2000.

------, "Bertelsmann: Building a Video Napster," http://www.businessweek.com, February 5, 2001.

------, "Bertelsmann's Bold Buyout Plan," http://www.businessweek.com, March 22, 2007.

------, "Bertelsmann's Slimmer Profile Generates Thinner Profits," http://www.businessweek.com, September 7, 2006.

------, "Bertelsmann's Time of Trials," http://www.businessweek.com, May 28, 2001.

------, "Where the Book Business Is Humming," Business Week, May 14, 2007, p. 50.

"Ich Bin ein Amerikaner," Economist, June 18, 1994, pp. 69-71.

Johnston, David Cay, "Bertelsmann to Exit U.S. Magazine Market," New York Times, May 25, 2005, p. C10.

Karnitschnig, Matthew, "Bertelsmann Buys Bookspan," Wall Street Journal (Europe), April 10, 2007, p. 8.

Landler, Mark, "Bertelsmann to Buy Back 25% Stake for $5.8 Billion," New York Times, May 26, 2006, p. C3.

------, "An Overnight Success--After Six Years," Business Week, April 19, 1993, pp. 52, 54.

Leeds, Jeff, "Bertelsmann Reaches Deal with EMI over Napster," New York Times, March 27, 2007, p. C4.

------, "Sony and BMG Start Building Their Odd Music Club," New York Times, July 30, 2004, p. C1.

Lottman, Herbert R., "Beyond Books at Bertelsmann: The World's Biggest Book Publisher Has Many Other Irons in the Fire, at Home and Abroad," Publishers Weekly, January 23, 1995, p. 17.

Meza, Ed, "Bertelsmann Sells Trade, Science Unit for $1.2 Billion," Daily Variety, May 14, 2003, p. 6.

Meza, Ed, and Steven Zeitchik, "Bertelsmann's Public Face," Daily Variety, March 23, 2006, pp. 1+.

Millot, Jim, "Bertelsmann Prepares for Post-Middelhoff Era: Little Change Seen for Random House & Bookspan, but Company Could Unload BN.com Investment," Publishers Weekly, August 5, 2002, p. 9.

Morais, Richard C., "The Latest U.S. Media Giant Isn't Even American," Forbes, April 25, 1988, p. 70.

Oppelaar, Justin, and Christian Kohl, "Bertelsmann Numbers Good Despite Zomba Writedown," Daily Variety, March 26, 2003, pp. 5+.

Picaper, Jean-Paul, "Bertelsmann: le Géant Allemand de l'Edition," Le Figaro, February 20, 1989.

Sabbagh, Dan, "Bertelsmann Earmarks Euro 6bn for New-Media Acquisitions," Times (London), March 22, 2007, p. 55.

Schifrin, Matthew, "The Betriebsergebnis Factor," Forbes, May 23, 1994, pp. 118-24.

Schwartz, John, "Bertelsmann, in a Reversal, Agrees to Acquire Napster," New York Times, May 18, 2002, p. B2.

Stodghill, Mark, "Jury: Woman Must Pay $222,000," Duluth News Tribune, October 5, 2007, pp. 1A, 5A.

Studemann, Frederick, "Europe's Great Communicator," International Management, September 1992, pp. 34-37.

— Dirk Bavendamm; translated from the German by Philippe A. Barbour; Updated by David E. Salamie, Linda M. Gwilym, Kathleen Peippo