Bertelsmann-media worldwide Bertelsmann is a group of companies that is synonymous with first-rate media content and services. All over the world, Bertelsmann occupies leading positions in its core markets - television, books, music, magazines, media clubs, and media services. In fiscal year 2004, consolidated revenues increased to €17.0 billion compared to €16.8 billion in the preceding year. Operating EBIT rose to €1.4 billion from €1.0 billion the previous year, and net income amounted to €1.2 billion compared to €208 million in 2003. Bertelsmann employs approximately 76,000 people in 63 countries. The Bertelsmann group includes market leaders such as RTL Group, the No.1 television and radio business in Europe, and Random House, the world's largest consumer book publisher with more than 100 imprints. Creativity and strong brands are also trademarks of Europe's biggest magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr, with its variety of high-quality titles, and the BMG music business, with its wide-ranging repertoire. The media services offered by the Arvato division include distribution facilities, call centers, and customer loyalty systems, as well as state-of-the-art printers, storage media production houses, and comprehensive IT services. Direct Group Bertelsmann bundles book and music clubs with a worldwide membership of over 30 million. RTL Group accounts for 27.7 percent to Bertelsmann AG's total revenues; Random House contributes 10.2 percent, Gruner + Jahr 13.9 percent, BMG 14.5 percent, Arvato 21.3 percent, and Direct Group 12.4 percent. A breakdown by field of business shows that content creation, media services, advertising and direct-to-customer businesses each stand for roughly one-quarter of consolidated revenues. Bertelsmann AG is a private stock corporation. In 1993, Reinhard Mohn transferred the majority of shares to Bertelsmann Stiftung, a foundation he had established earlier, to safeguard the company in the long-term - independent of ownership interests. Today, Bertelsmann AG's shareholders are the Bertelsmann Stiftung foundation, the Mohn family, and Belgium's Groupe Bruxelles Lambert. Today, Bertelsmann AG is owned by Bertelsmann Stiftung (57.6 percent), the Mohn family (17.3 percent) and Belgium's Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (25.1 percent). Capital ownership and the exercise of voting rights are kept seperate: Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft (BVG) holds 75 percent of the voting rights; the other 25 percent are held by Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL). The corporate management of Bertelsmann AG is conducted by a seven-person Executive Board, which sets the group's strategic goals. Gunter Thielen has led the group as Chairman and CEO since August 2002. Bertelsmann complies with the international standard IFRS in its financial reporting. www.bertelsmann.com RTL Revenues €4.9 billion Operating EBIT €668 million 8,117 employees Operating in 32 countries RTL Group is Europe's leading broadcast and TV production company, with holdings in 31 TV channels and 30 radio stations in ten countries, and worldwide content production. Its television arm includes the RTL Television family of channels in Germany, M6 in France, Five in the U.K., RTL channels in the Benelux countries, in Croatia, and Hungary, and Antena 3 in Spain. Its best-known radio station is RTL in France. Fremantle Media is a subsidiary of RTL Group and is one of the largest international creators and producers of program brands in the world. It produces leading prime-time drama, serial drama, entertainment, factual, and comedy programming in over 40 countries. Bertelsmann owns more than 90 percent of the publicly listed RTL Group, making it the main shareholder. www.rtl-group.com Random House Revenues €1.8 billion Operating EBIT €140 million 5,383 employees Operating in 16 countries Random House is the world's largest consumer book publisher and the only one that publishes adult and children's fiction and non-fiction hardcovers and paperbacks in English, German, Spanish, Japanese, and Korean. Its portfolio comprises more than 100 editorially independent imprints, including Knopf, Bantam, and Crown in the U.S., Ebury, Century, and Arrow in the U.K., and C. Bertelsmann, Siedler, Heyne, and Goldmann in Germany. Each year, some 9,000 new books enhance an active catalogue of more than 50,000 titles. No other trade publisher tops the bestseller lists as often - with authors such as John Grisham, Dan Brown, and Danielle Steel - while also publishing as many Nobel Prize Literature laureates on its author roster. Random House is a wholly owned division of Bertelsmann. www.randomhouse.com Gruner + Jahr Revenues €2.4 billion Operating EBIT €210 million 11,671 employees Operating in ten countries The Gruner + Jahr printing and publishing company is Europe's biggest magazine publisher. It produces more than 125 magazines in nine countries, as well as the publications' complementary websites. G+J publications include Stern, Brigitte, Geo, Capital, Gala, Eltern for Family, PM, Neon, Financial Times Deutschland, Essen & Trinken, National Geographic, as well as Télé 2 Semaines and Femme Actuelle - many of them in multiple editions and several countries. The company continually enhances its portfolio with innovative new launches and line extensions. Gruner + Jahr stands for quality journalism at its best: thoroughly researched, informative, inspiring, and entertaining. In early 2005, the division acquired a majority stake in the Motorpresse Stuttgart publishing group, whose 135 titles in 14 countries round out and lastingly enhance G+J's own spectrum of publications. Gruner + Jahr AG is in the process of merging its gravure operations with those of Arvato and Axel Springer AG. Bertelsmann AG owns 74.9 percent of the publishing company Gruner +Jahr; the Jahr publishing family in Hamburg owns 25.1 percent. www.guj.com BMG Revenues €2.5 billion Operating EBIT €162 million 4,259 employees Operating in 54 countries The BMG division consists of the Sony BMG Music Entertainment joint venture and the BMG Music Publishing company. Sony BMG unites legendary labels like Arista, Columbia Records, Epic Records, Ricordi, Funhouse, Jive, J Records, and RCA Records under one roof. Its spectrum ranges from Hip-Hop to musical soundtracks, country to classical music, and gospel to rock. Sony BMG is home to a number of domestic and international stars, including Avril Lavigne, Beyoncé, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Usher, Christina Aguilera, Dido, Anastacia, Alicia Keys, and Carlos Santana. The songwriters and composers signed with BMG Music Publishing also enjoy a superb reputation. The music publisher is one of the world's largest and most successful. Bertelsmann owns a 50 percent stake in Sony BMG; BMG Music Publishing is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG. www.bmg.com Arvato Revenues €3.8 billion Operating EBIT €310 million 33,813 employees Operating in 28 countries Arvato AG, whose 250 subsidiaries make it one of the largest internationally networked media service providers, is Bertelsmann's media services division. Arvato AG includes the Arvato Print companies (Mohn Media, the Maul Belser media group, as well as several printing plants in Europe and America), the Arvato Direct Services (customer loyalty systems and call centers), Arvato Logistics Services (logistics and supply chain management), Arvato Storage Media (CD and DVD production), and Arvato Systems (international IT services) units. Empolis, a content and knowledge management solutions company, and the mobile entertainment provider Arvato Mobile, with its Handy.de and TJ.net brands, are also part of the division. Arvato AG is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG. In the rotogravure segment, Arvato is in the process of merging key printing operations with those of its Bertelsmann sister G+J and Axel Springer AG. www.arvato.com Direct Group Revenues €2.2 billion Operating EBIT €32 million 12,116 employees Operating in 22 countries Direct Group Bertelsmann bundles Bertelsmann's worldwide direct-to-customer business with media products. More than 30 million club members drive Direct Group's business and ensure its position as one of the world's biggest media traders. At the heart of the business are its book and music clubs in 22 countries, including famous brands like France Loisirs (France), Book-of-the-Month Club (USA), Der Club (Germany), Circulo de Lectores (Spain), and BMG Columbia House (USA). Members can access the clubs' broad range of products using catalogs, the Internet, or one of the 600-odd club centers around the world. Bookspan, a partnership between Bertelsmann and Time Warner, is the parent organization of Doubleday Entertainment (the preeminent marketer of book clubs via direct mail and e-commerce) and YES Solutions (the preeminent provider of creative, media and operational services). BMG Columbia House, Inc. is the world's largest direct-to-customer distributor of music and movies. The company's brands include BMG Music Service, Columbia House and CDNow. BMG Music Service is the leading direct-to-customer distributor of CDs and offers over 14,000 titles provided by the four major music groups and over 100 independent record labels to members. Columbia House is the largest direct marketer of DVDs in the United States and Canada with over 9500 titles from which to choose provided by most of the major motion picture studios. BMG Columbia House, Inc. reaches over 16 million music and movie fans via club catalogues and websites (www.bmgmusic.com and www.columbiahouse.com). Direct Group Bertelsmann is a wholly owned subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG. www.directgroup.de BOOKSPAN, a partnership between Bertelsmann and Time Warner, is the parent company of Doubleday Entertainment (the leading marketer of book clubs and merchandise via direct mail and e-commerce in the U.S.) and Yes Solutions (a preeminent provider of creative, media and logistics services). We have many new and exciting career opportunities for talented professionals. Doubleday Entertainment is the preeminent marketer of books and merchandise via direct mail and e-commerce in the U.S. A wholly owned subsidiary of BOOKSPAN, Doubleday Entertainment and its predecessors (Book-of-the-Month Club and Doubleday Book Club) have been recognized as leaders in the direct marketing business for over 70 years. We have many new and exciting career opportunities for talented professionals. YES SolutionsTM is a preeminent provider of creative, credit, media, lettershop, customer relationship management, transaction processing and logistics services to book clubs and direct to consumer marketers in the United States. A wholly owned subsidiary of BOOKSPAN, YES SolutionsTM and its predecessors have been recognized leaders in managing long- term customer relationships and in distributing books and merchandise directly to consumers for over 70 years. We have many new and exciting career opportunities for talented professionals Company History Bertelsmann's history dates back to the first half of the 19th century. In 1835, the printer Carl Bertelsmann established the C. Bertelsmann imprint with its own book-printing capabilities in Gütersloh, in the German state of Westphalia. The imprint soon added newspapers and works of nonfiction to its original theological publishing program. Entertainment literature brought the breakthrough to a broad readership in the years after 1935. During the Third Reich, books with a militaristic background and nationalistic content increasingly appeared on the publishing program. In 1944, the publisher was closed down, mainly for illegally procuring paper. The following year, an air strike razed large parts of the publishing complex to the ground. Reinhard Mohn rebuilt Bertelsmann after the war and laid the cornerstone for its development into a modern media company. He established the corporate culture that shapes the company to this day, built on the principles of partnership, decentralized organization, and room for creativity. The individual units in the group enjoy maximum possible entrepreneurial freedom. Employees were involved in decision-making processes and in the company's commercial success at an early stage. Bertelsmann embraces the principle of diversity in its publishing activities. Bertelsmann rapidly expanded into additional fields of business and international markets. Following the establishment of the "Lesering" (reading ring), later known as Der Club, the company experienced rapid growth in the 1950s. A Schallplattenring for music and an in-house record label soon followed and became the nucleus of Bertelsmann's music business. In the 1960s, the establishment of a book club in Spain marked the first venture into international territory. This period also marks the company's entry into the magazine business with the acquisition of a stake in Gruner + Jahr. In 1971, Bertelsmann was converted to a stock company. The family business became a corporation led by appointed management. In the early 1980s, Bertelsmann stepped up its expansion in the U.S. The breakthrough in the world's most important media market was achieved with the purchase of the Arista and RCA U.S. labels and of Doubleday, the publishing house. In 1998, Bertelsmann acquired Random House, the renowned U.S. publisher. In Germany, the starting signal for commercial television was given in 1984 - Bertelsmann was in on the action from the very beginning with RTL. In 2001, Bertelsmann acquired the majority of shares in RTL Group. Television became the most important line of business, followed by Arvato AG's rapidly growing media services. The Internet boom brought Bertelsmann extraordinarily high profits thanks to early investments and a well-timed exit from marginal businesses. Since mid-2002, Bertelsmann has concentrated on its core businesses and increasing profitability. The scene was set for deployment into new markets. 2004 saw the merger of Sony Music and Bertelsmann Music Group's recorded-music divisions into Sony BMG, a clear commitment to the music business. In 2005 Gruner + Jahr added the international Motorpresse Stuttgart publishing group to its portfolio. Gruner + Jahr and Arvato's gravure operations are being merged with those of Axel Springer AG to provide long-term security for their printing activities in the keenly contested European market for illustration printing. Today, Bertelsmann generates two-thirds of total revenue outside Germany, mostly in other European countries, the U.S., and Asia. Date of issue: May 2005 All figures refer to fiscal year 2004 View Jobs for Bertelsmann