MAIN NEWS HEADLINES
January 25 – February 1, 2007 Edition
Ostrowski Named
Bertelsmann CEO,
Gives RH Heads Up
GERMANY/1/19/07—The Bertelsmann AG Supervisory Board has appointed Hartmut Ostrowski (48) Bertelsmann AG’s next Chairman & CEO, effective January 1, 2008. Bertlesmann is the parent company of Random House in the U.S. and abroad, and the incoming CEO has already assured Random House Chairman Peter Olson that Olson has the new executive’s full support.
Hartmut Ostrowski has been a member of the Bertelsmann AG Executive Board since 2002. During this time, he consistently kept the Arvato division on a growth track and led it to great business success. His major achievements as an entrepreneur include building Arvato into an international media and communications services provider with 47,000 employees in 37 countries.
In a statement from Liz and Reinhard Mohn, supervisory board members of the public company and part of the founding family, said: “We welcome Hartmut Ostrowski’s appointment as the future Chairman & CEO as part of the changes in Bertelsmann’s top leadership. These decisions safeguard the company’s successful development for the long term. Hartmut Ostrowski stands for excellence in entrepreneurship and great business success – and his managerial style of leadership through partnership embodies Bertelsmann’s proven corporate culture. He systematically made the most of his entrepreneurial freedom, always displaying the highest degree of creativity and strategic farsightedness.”
As a result of Hartmut Ostrowski´s appointment, Rolf Buch (41), currently Chief Executive Officer Arvato Direct Services, will succeed as Chairman & CEO of the Arvato division and assume his seat on the Bertelsmann AG Executive Board. As a member of the Arvato Executive Board, Rolf Buch was instrumental in the group’s success and contributed significantly to expanding the services business.
On January 1, 2008, current Bertelsmann AG Chairman & CEO Gunter Thielen will move to the Supervisory Board and will be elected its chairman, which the Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft (BVG) determined at its session yesterday. The group’s long-time Supervisory Board Chairman Dieter Vogel will leave office after 20 years of very successful work on the Supervisory Board, 11 of them as its chairman. He will continue to be a shareholder of the BVG.
Dieter Vogel, Chairman of the Bertelsmann AG Supervisory Board, commented: “The Supervisory Board believes that the changeover will shape the company’s future for the long term. Hartmut Ostrowski’s appointment as Chairman & CEO and Rolf Buch’s to the Bertelsmann AG Executive Board safeguard both continuity and new momentum in the group’s development. The Supervisory Board wishes Hartmut Ostrowski and Rolf Buch the best of success when they take up their new positions at the beginning of 2008.”
About Bertelsmann AG
The media company Bertelsmann commands globally leading positions in the major markets. Its core business is the creation of first-class media content. Bertelsmann includes RTL Group, Europe’s No.1 in television and radio, as well as the world’s biggest book-publishing group, Random House, with more than 100 publishing imprints (Alfred A. Knopf, Bantam, Goldmann). Gruner + Jahr, the European No.1 in magazine publishing (Stern, Geo, Capital), and the Sony BMG joint venture (Anastacia, Alicia Keys, Beyoncé, Dido, Usher) also stand for creativity and powerful brands. The Arvato division bundles the group’s media and communications services, which include the expanding units Arvato Logistics Services and Arvato Direct Services (distribution, service centers, customer relationship management), along with state-of-the-art printers, storage media production and comprehensive IT-services. Bertelsmann’s direct-to-customer businesses are bundled in Direct Group: book and music clubs with more than 35 million members all over the world.
About Random House
Random House, Inc. assumed its current form with its acquisition by Bertelsmann in 1998, which brought together the imprints of the former Random House, Inc. with those of the former Bantam Doubleday Dell. Random House, Inc.’s publishing groups include the Bantam Dell Publishing Group, the Crown Publishing Group, the Doubleday Broadway Publishing Group, the Knopf Publishing Group, the Random House Audio Publishing Group, Random House Children’s Books, the Random House Diversified Publishing Group, the Random House Information Group, the Random House Publishing Group, and Random House Ventures.
Together, these groups and their imprints publish fiction and nonfiction, both original and reprints, by some of the foremost and most popular writers of our time. They appear in a full range of formatsincluding hardcover, trade paperback, mass market paperback, audio, electronic, and digital, for the widest possible readership from adults to young adults and children.
The reach of Random House, Inc. is global, with subsidiaries and affiliated companies in Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa. Through Random House International, the books published by the imprints of Random House, Inc. are sold in virtually every country in the world.
