This Ger­man media car­tel needs to be bro­ken up if peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Europe, are ever going to wake up to Ger­man hege­mon­ic ambi­tion.

Ber­tels­mann even have edi­to­r­i­al con­trol of some of the most suc­cess­ful British TV pro­duc­tion com­pa­nies, insert­ing all the pro­pa­gan­da they want into British prime time fic­tion­al TV shows.

Remove Ber­tels­mann and Siemens, remove an awful lot of Ger­man pow­er.

@Dave,

Megau­pload is com­ing back as a new ser­vice called Mega and it’s founder, Kim, is some­how free. Either way, there is an awe­some video and song at his site, where he anounced the forth­com­ing Mega ser­vice. I’m SUPER inter­est­ed in get­ting your per­spec­tive on this and how you see this as fit­ting into the grander scheme of things which we com­mon folk can­not see. Let me know, Dave, but while you con­sid­er my request, please check out the site, which has the video & song on the front page with a new cam­paign.

http://kim.com/

@Jay–

This post cov­ers my view of Kim Schmitz, aka Kim Dot­com.

Read it care­ful­ly and fol­low the links.

Best,

Dave Emory

Iran Spy­ing in Vien­na says JPost: BERLIN – The Aus­tri­an cap­i­tal is a main Euro­pean hub for Tehran’s spy net­work, the US-based Fed­er­al Research Divi­sion of the Library of Con­gress con­clud­ed in Decem­ber in a com­pre­hen­sive report on Iran­ian intel­li­gence activ­i­ties.

The report was con­duct­ed with the Com­bat­ing Ter­ror­ism Tech­ni­cal Sup­port Office’s Irreg­u­lar War­fare Sup­port Pro­gram and unleashed a flur­ry of reports in the Aus­tri­an media last week.

Accord­ing to the US study, “Vien­na... is alleged­ly full of MOIS [Iran­ian Min­istry of Intel­li­gence and Secu­ri­ty] agents. It is because of the con­tin­u­ous good rela­tion­ship between Iran and Aus­tria since the Rev­o­lu­tion – after the US hostage cri­sis – which result­ed in con­dem­na­tion of the Islam­ic Repub­lic by many coun­tries and seclud­ed Iran in many ways. Aus­tria was one of the few coun­tries that was not con­cerned.”

“It appears that Iran takes advan­tage of this rela­tion­ship by deploy­ing its intel­li­gence offi­cers in Aus­tria. It has been report­ed that MOIS agents iden­ti­fy anti–Islamic Repub­lic polit­i­cal activists and threat­en to silence them,” the report said.

The MOIS is respon­si­ble for sup­press­ing dis­sent in the Islam­ic Repub­lic among oppo­si­tion groups and among the large dias­po­ra Iran­ian com­mu­ni­ty, accord­ing to Iran­ian dis­si­dents and experts. Iran­ian reform groups con­sid­er the MOIS a ruth­less appa­ra­tus of Iran’s gov­ern­ment.

In response to a query from The Jerusalem Post on Sun­day, Karl-Heinz Grund­böck, a spokesman for Austria’s Inte­ri­or Min­istry, wrote via email that the domes­tic intel­li­gence agency Ver­fas­sungss­chutz can­not issue a com­ment beyond the infor­ma­tion con­tained in the agency’s report, and referred the Post to the agency’s intel­li­gence analy­sis.

Christoph Mohn’s father was Rein­hard Mohn http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/bertelsmann-names-christoph-mohn-chairman-366816

The below press announce­ment is from Bertells­mann
———————————–
Güter­sloh, 01/02/2013

Christoph Mohn chairs the Ber­tels­mann Super­vi­so­ry Board from Jan­u­ary 1

Gunter Thielen’s suc­ces­sor takes office
Sixth gen­er­a­tion of the Ber­tels­mann and Mohn fam­i­lies

Christoph Mohn (47) has been the new Chair­man of the Ber­tels­mann SE & Co. KGaA Super­vi­so­ry Board since Jan­u­ary 1, 2013. He suc­ceed­ed Gunter Thie­len (70), who resigned from the Super­vi­so­ry Board after five years as its Chair­man on the reach­ing retire­ment age. The con­trol­ling board chose its new Chair­man in August of last year. At the same time the Ber­tels­mann Man­age­ment SE Super­vi­so­ry Board (the gen­er­al part­ner of Ber­tels­mann SE & Co. KGaA) also appoint­ed Christoph Mohn as its future Chair­man with effect from the turn of the year.

Says Mohn: “I look for­ward to the new chal­lenge and the grow­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty asso­ci­at­ed with it, which I am priv­i­leged to under­take for Ber­tels­mann as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the sixth gen­er­a­tion of the Ber­tels­mann and Mohn fam­i­lies. I have pre­pared inten­sive­ly for this role, for which I would espe­cial­ly like to thank my pre­de­ces­sor Gunter Thie­len. I will ful­fill these respon­si­bil­i­ties as an active con­troller, togeth­er with my Super­vi­so­ry Board col­leagues and col­leagues from indus­try and the works coun­cil. I take office in a high­ly dynam­ic and impor­tant phase for Ber­tels­mann that will lead to a long-term strate­gic strength­en­ing of the Group.”

He adds: “I will do every­thing in my pow­er to sup­port Thomas Rabe and the Exec­u­tive Board in mak­ing Ber­tels­mann a faster-grow­ing, more inter­na­tion­al com­pa­ny. The com­pa­ny has already defined a clear path to achiev­ing this with its four strate­gic pri­or­i­ties of strength­en­ing the core, dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, build­ing growth plat­forms and expand­ing in growth regions. I look for­ward to work­ing with our CEO, with whom I share many beliefs. We will work with the excel­lent Exec­u­tive Board team to safe­guard the future of this com­pa­ny, its con­ti­nu­ity and its inde­pen­dence.”

About Ber­tels­mann

Ber­tels­mann is an inter­na­tion­al media com­pa­ny whose core divi­sions encom­pass tele­vi­sion (RTL Group), book pub­lish­ing (Ran­dom House), mag­a­zine pub­lish­ing (Gruner + Jahr), ser­vices (Arva­to), and print­ing (Be Print­ers) in some 50 coun­tries. In 2011, the company’s busi­ness­es, with their more than 100,000 employ­ees, gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of €15.3 bil­lion. Ber­tels­mann stands for a com­bi­na­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty and entre­pre­neur­ship that empow­ers the cre­ation of first-rate media, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and ser­vice offer­ings to inspire peo­ple around the world and to pro­vide inno­v­a­tive solu­tions for cus­tomers.

Munch, munch, munch..... From Ber­tels­mann.
———————————–
Gütersloh/New York, 03/01/2013

Ber­tels­mann Acquires Full Own­er­ship of Music Com­pa­ny BMG

KKR sells its stake fol­low­ing suc­cess­ful build-up
BMG has been joint­ly devel­oped into a lead­ing glob­al music com­pa­ny
Ber­tels­mann strength­ens its growth area of music rights man­age­ment

Ber­tels­mann, the inter­na­tion­al media group, is tak­ing full own­er­ship of the inno­v­a­tive music rights man­age­ment com­pa­ny BMG by acquir­ing the shares cur­rent­ly held by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), and will con­tin­ue to devel­op BMG as a whol­ly owned sub­sidiary. The trans­ac­tion, which is sub­ject to reg­u­la­to­ry approval, is sched­uled to close dur­ing the first half of this year. The par­ties have agreed to keep the finan­cial details of the trans­ac­tion con­fi­den­tial. BMG admin­is­ters the rights to more than one mil­lion songs, includ­ing works by such artists as Bruno Mars, Duran Duran, Gos­sip, John­ny Cash, and Will.i.am. It also rep­re­sents the mas­ter rights (com­po­si­tion and record­ing) of artists who include Bri­an Fer­ry, Nena and Anasta­cia.

Ber­tels­mann Chair­man & CEO Thomas Rabe said: “This is a great day for Ber­tels­mann: We are bring­ing the music home to our group. A few years after our exit from the tra­di­tion­al music busi­ness, in asso­ci­a­tion with KKR, we have suc­ceed­ed in build­ing the world’s fourth-largest music rights man­age­ment busi­ness.” Rabe empha­sized that KKR has been a good part­ner. “Our part­ner­ship made it pos­si­ble for BMG to take advan­tage of con­sol­i­da­tion oppor­tu­ni­ties and to rapid­ly advance the organ­ic expan­sion of the busi­ness. I thank them for an excel­lent col­lab­o­ra­tion.”

Tak­ing full own­er­ship of BMG is an impor­tant step in putting Bertelsmann’s growth strat­e­gy into prac­tice, Rabe explained. “We are hap­py to have BMG as our own com­pa­ny again. CEO Hartwig Masuch and his team deserve our thanks for the pas­sion and know how they brought to devel­op­ing a small cre­ative nucle­us into a pow­er­house that pro­vides the right answers to the chal­lenges of the music indus­try in this dig­i­tal age.”

Johannes Huth, Head of KKR Europe, said: “Our inno­v­a­tive part­ner­ship with Ber­tels­mann, which com­bined the pro­fes­sion­al exper­tise of a glob­al media com­pa­ny with the finan­cial strength, net­work and busi­ness-build­ing exper­tise of KKR, was a com­plete suc­cess. We explored new busi­ness approach­es with Ber­tels­mann; BMG did pio­neer­ing work in the music rights mar­ket with its dig­i­tal, ser­vice-focused busi­ness approach. The mod­el of a ‘growth and build’ part­ner­ship between a cor­po­rate group and KKR is bound to be seen more often in the future.”

Thomas Hesse, who as Pres­i­dent, Cor­po­rate Devel­op­ment and New Busi­ness­es, at Ber­tels­mann is respon­si­ble for BMG, added: “The BMG suc­cess sto­ry is impres­sive. The com­pa­ny works with a lean orga­ni­za­tion, a man­age­ment with an excel­lent net­work, and a deep under­stand­ing of the needs of artists, song­writ­ers and copy­right hold­ers in the dig­i­tal age. We will oper­ate this busi­ness long-term to active­ly expand it.”

 
Hartwig Masuch, CEO of BMG, said: “For BMG, this is a return home. Being a sub­sidiary of one of the world’s lead­ing media com­pa­nies opens up more fields of coop­er­a­tion for us and our cus­tomers in the future, and we look for­ward to many new, long-term devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties. The world­wide increase in the use of music, and the emer­gence of new dig­i­tal busi­ness mod­els offer a vari­ety of oppor­tu­ni­ties that we will active­ly explore. We are grate­ful to KKR for always shar­ing our vision of an alter­na­tive, ser­vice-ori­ent­ed com­pa­ny in the music rights mar­ket, and for active­ly sup­port­ing us with their team these past three and a half years. With­out KKR, this devel­op­ment would not have been pos­si­ble.”

Philipp Freise, Head of KKR’s Euro­pean media busi­ness, added, “BMG has deliv­ered an out­stand­ing per­for­mance since it was found­ed, and has exceed­ed our orig­i­nal expec­ta­tions. Togeth­er with Ber­tels­mann, we sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly sup­port­ed BMG’s inter­na­tion­al expan­sion. As we had hoped, today, BMG is one of the world’s lead­ing music rights man­age­ment com­pa­nies and very well posi­tioned to con­tin­ue writ­ing its suc­cess sto­ry under the proven lead­er­ship of Ber­tels­mann.”

BMG, with head­quar­ters in Berlin and a pres­ence in eight core coun­tries, is high­ly prof­itable on an oper­at­ing result lev­el. Numer­ous renowned artists are signed to the com­pa­ny, which in recent years has acquired sev­er­al rights cat­a­logs and labels from the Unit­ed States, UK, Ger­many and France. BMG will be ful­ly con­sol­i­dat­ed with­in Ber­tels­mann after antitrust clear­ance has been received. Hartwig Masuch will remain CEO. J.P. Mor­gan served as Bertelsmann’s finan­cial advi­sor in the share buy­back, while KKR was advised by Cit­i­group.

About Ber­tels­mann
Ber­tels­mann is an inter­na­tion­al media com­pa­ny whose core divi­sions encom­pass tele­vi­sion
(RTL Group), book pub­lish­ing (Ran­dom House), mag­a­zine pub­lish­ing (Gruner + Jahr), ser­vices (Arva­to), and print­ing (Be Print­ers) in some 50 coun­tries. In 2011, the company’s busi­ness­es, with their more than 100,000 employ­ees, gen­er­at­ed rev­enues of €15.3 bil­lion. Ber­tels­mann stands for a com­bi­na­tion of cre­ativ­i­ty and entre­pre­neur­ship that empow­ers the cre­ation of first-rate media, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and ser­vice offer­ings to inspire peo­ple around the world and to pro­vide inno­v­a­tive solu­tions for cus­tomers.
http://www.bertelsmann.com

About KKR
Found­ed in 1976 and led by Hen­ry Kravis and George Roberts, KKR is a lead­ing glob­al invest­ment firm with $75.5 bil­lion in assets under man­age­ment as of Decem­ber 31, 2012. With offices around the world, KKR man­ages assets through a vari­ety of invest­ment funds and accounts cov­er­ing mul­ti­ple asset class­es. KKR seeks to cre­ate val­ue by bring­ing oper­a­tional exper­tise to its port­fo­lio com­pa­nies and through active over­sight and mon­i­tor­ing of its invest­ments. KKR com­ple­ments its invest­ment exper­tise and strength­ens inter­ac­tions with fund investors through its client rela­tion­ships and cap­i­tal mar­kets plat­form. KKR & Co. L.P. is pub­licly trad­ed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE: KKR), and “KKR,” as used in this release, includes its sub­sidiaries, their man­aged invest­ment funds and accounts, and/or their affil­i­at­ed invest­ment vehi­cles, as appro­pri­ate.
http://www.kkr.com

 
About BMG
BMG is an inter­na­tion­al group of music com­pa­nies focused on the man­age­ment of music rights. BMG cov­ers the entire range of rights admin­is­tra­tion, devel­op­ment, and exploita­tion, plac­ing the needs of song­writ­ers and artists at the core of its busi­ness mod­el. Since its found­ing in 2008, BMG has estab­lished a pres­ence in eight core music mar­kets and rep­re­sents the rights of more than a mil­lion songs and record­ings includ­ing Crosstown, Cher­ry Lane, Stage Three, Ever­green, Chrysalis and Bug in addi­tion to a num­ber of signed promi­nent artists and song­writ­ers. The com­pa­ny trades under the name BMG Chrysalis in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, the Unit­ed King­dom and Swe­den fol­low­ing the acqui­si­tion of Chrysalis plc.
http://www.bmg.com

The late Anti-Fas­cist Amer­i­can Folk Icon Woody Guthrie has been a BMG Artist since BMG acquired Bug Music. He wrote a ton of anti-fas­cist songs and even had “This machine Kills fas­cists” inscribed on his gui­tar. Now when his music is bought Ber­tels­mann gets a cut. It’s a sign of the times;increasingly, this land is their land.

http://bmg.com/category/music?artist=woody-guthrie

http://www.americansongwriter.com/2011/09/bmg-snatches-up-bug-music-ceo-sues-company/

*burp*

Bloomberg
Bertelsmann’s Ran­dom House Wins EU Back­ing for Pen­guin Bid
By Stephanie Bodoni & Aoife White — Apr 5, 2013 10:14 AM CT

Ber­tels­mann SE’s Ran­dom House won Euro­pean Union approval to buy Pear­son Plc (PSON)’s Pen­guin unit to cre­ate the largest book pub­lish­er in the U.K. and the U.S.

The Euro­pean Com­mis­sion said the deal wouldn’t raise com­pe­ti­tion con­cerns because the com­bi­na­tion would face strong rival­ry from large and small pub­lish­ers, reg­u­la­tors said in an e‑mailed state­ment.

There was “no evi­dence that the trans­ac­tion would lead to risks of coor­di­na­tion among pub­lish­ers in rela­tion to the acqui­si­tion of authors’ rights and the sale of Eng­lish lan­guage books to deal­ers,” the com­mis­sion said.

The joint ven­ture, named Pen­guin Ran­dom House and to be based in New York, will be 53 per­cent-owned by Ber­tels­mann, with Pear­son hold­ing the remain­der, the com­pa­nies said in Octo­ber. Ber­tels­mann Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Thomas Rabe said the ven­ture will con­trol about 25 per­cent of the indus­try.

Ber­tels­mann said the EU approval adds to pre­vi­ous back­ing from the U.S. Depart­ment of Jus­tice and the Aus­tralian and New Zealand com­pe­ti­tion author­i­ties ear­li­er this year.

...

Yeah, that “com­pe­ti­tion” is going to be fierce.

The pub­lish­er in this arti­cle is not named, but...

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2013/05/21/sad-truth-about-today-modern-germany-and-jews/

The sad truth about today’s mod­ern Ger­many and Jews

By Tuvia Tenen­bom

Pub­lished May 21, 2013
Three years ago I was con­tact­ed by an edi­tor of Rowohlt, one of the biggest book pub­lish­ers in Ger­many. She said she loved my arti­cles in the Zeit, the pres­ti­gious Ger­man news­pa­per I’ve been writ­ing for, and would like me to come to Ger­many for a few months, inter­view peo­ple and write about them “in the same style you write for the Zeit.”

It didn’t take long to con­vince me and soon enough I showed up in Ger­many.

Unbe­liev­able land­scapes, deli­cious food, shiny muse­ums, cel­e­brat­ed intel­lec­tu­als, tire­less farm­ers, sleep­less artists, blas­phe­mous zealots, faith­ful athe­ists and a high­ly mod­ern soci­ety wel­comed me. All I had to do was to befriend every­body.

I inter­viewed peo­ple from all walks of life. From the famous chain-smok­ing icon­ic Chan­cel­lor, Hel­mut Schmidt, to the for­lorn hero­in addicts on the streets of Frank­furt; from the pub­lish­er of the largest Euro­pean dai­ly, Bild, to obscure blog­gers; from the Prime Min­is­ter of Sax­ony, to bored muse­um guards; frail WWII vet­er­ans, to sporty high school­ers; rad­i­cal left­ists who want to over­throw the gov­ern­ment, any gov­ern­ment, to neo-Nazis who won’t set­tle for any­thing less than Adolf Hitler; top offi­cials of Mer­cedes and Volk­swa­gen, to street sell­ers of cheep neck­laces; edu­cat­ed and illit­er­ates; rich and poor; on the east and on the west, in the north and in the south.

We ate togeth­er, drank togeth­er, and they talked.

Hard­ly a day passed by with­out at least one inter­vie­wee talk­ing to me about the “rich Jews,” the “shrewd Jews,” the Israelis who eat Pales­tini­ans for break­fast on a dai­ly basis, the “manip­u­lat­ing Jew,” or any­thing else “Jew.”

Ger­many, I sad­ly found out, was obsessed with Jews. Even those who claimed to like Jews had very strange thoughts about them. Some told me that all Jews knew each oth­er, oth­ers said that all Jews helped each oth­er, and still oth­ers claimed that all Jews were “very good” with mon­ey.

The peo­ple thus talked and I wrote down what they said, word for word. I sub­mit­ted the book, a tes­ti­mo­ni­al to the ram­pant anti-Semi­tism in today’s Ger­many, to my edi­tor.

We met a week lat­er and she told me that she cried and laughed when read­ing the book and that it was even bet­ter than what she had expect­ed it to be. But the head of the pub­lish­ing com­pa­ny, who comes of Germany’s top fam­i­lies, went into a rage. He told me that I couldn’t write and that the book need­ed seri­ous edit­ing.

I asked him to show me what good writ­ing was.

He did.

If there was a line in the book about peo­ple not lik­ing “Jews,” he demand­ed that I change the word to “Israel.”

A chap­ter about a club that preached the killing of all liv­ing Jews had to be erased, he ordered. If some­body told me in an inter­view that the Jews were “the real Nazis,” their words had to be changed or cut.

Only if I obeyed him, I was led to under­stand, would I become a “good writer.”

He did­n’t stop there. He went real­ly low, at one point call­ing me a “hys­ter­i­cal Jew.” And then he broke our con­tract.

No Amer­i­can pub­lish­er I approached agreed to give the book life. No mat­ter what evi­dence at hand, main­stream Amer­i­can pub­lish­ers were not will­ing to take on Ger­many. Tak­ing on a West­ern ally, I guess, is not on the agen­da of present-day pub­lish­ers.

Fear­ing that the book’s find­ings would get for­ev­er lost, the Jew­ish The­ater of New York decid­ed to make the book avail­able to Amer­i­cans and pub­lished it under the title “I Sleep in Hitler’s Room.”

In Decem­ber of 2012 one of the most pres­ti­gious of Ger­man pub­lish­ers, Suhrkamp, made the book avail­able in Ger­many, under the title “Allein unter Deutschen.”

Ini­tial­ly, Ger­man crit­ics went bal­lis­tic, pas­sion­ate­ly deny­ing the book’s find­ings that most Ger­mans today hold anti-Semit­ic views.

One of them, in the high­ly regard­ed Lib­er­al news­pa­per, Süd­deutsche Zeitung, did­n’t shy away from going racist, shame­less­ly refer­ring to me as “the Jew Tenen­bom.”

Respond­ing to the grow­ing claims against me, I offered to face any intel­lec­tu­al will­ing to debate me in pub­lic.

Stand­ing before the peo­ple who demand­ed hon­esty, it soon became very clear that my staunchest crit­ics assailed the book with­out actu­al­ly read­ing it.

Hap­pi­ly, oth­er crit­ics took a clos­er look at the book and pub­lished glo­ri­ous reviews. Tens of thou­sands bought the book, send­ing it to the top 10 of Spiegel mag­a­zine’s best sell­ers list (equiv­a­lent to the New York Times best sell­ers list in the U.S.), and thou­sands of the book’s fans attend­ed pub­lic read­ings across Ger­many.

At its con­clu­sion, I end­ed my jour­ney into Ger­many hav­ing many more friends than when I start­ed it.

This makes me hap­py, as hav­ing new friends is always good, but this does­n’t mean that I’m not wor­ried. I am, and much more than I ever was.

Ger­many is a won­der­ful, beau­ti­ful coun­try, its soci­ety one of the more sophis­ti­cat­ed of our time.

Ger­many’s cul­tur­al insti­tu­tions, such as muse­ums, the­ater and jour­nal­ism, are the most advanced in the West­ern world — which prob­a­bly explains why its soci­ety’s stars are not movie actors but intel­lec­tu­als.

To me, and as far as I could wit­ness, most of those intel­lec­tu­als are pseu­do intel­lec­tu­als: they are brainy beyond repair, full of them­selves, have a very nar­row view of the world, lack a healthy sense of real­i­ty and, worse yet, suf­fer from acute anti-Semi­tism.

Again and again, his­to­ry teach­es us where this sense­less hate will lead.

Before WWII, just as now, Ger­many was very advanced for its time, proud­ly hold­ing one of the best human rights records. But then as now, the peo­ple had hate inside their hearts at the same time their mouths were utter­ing the loveli­est words of free­dom.

It was Adolf Hitler who knew to their deep­er thoughts and he turned them into the most sadis­tic known to human­i­ty.

If today Ger­many does­n’t wake up to its inner hate, a more sophis­ti­cat­ed Adolf will appear and nobody will be pow­er­ful enough to stop him.

It is time to tell Ger­many, in the clear­est of words: Peo­ple who suf­fer from can­cer can’t afford to ignore it. Ger­many must wake up to its can­cer, before it will be fatal­ly con­sumed by it.

Telling Ger­mans the truth is not hate but the purest form of love. I deeply love them, and there­fore I deeply care.

Gütersloh/London/New York, 07/01/2013

Ber­tels­mann And Pear­son Com­plete Merg­er To Form Pen­guin Ran­dom House

Con­tract Sign­ing Fol­lows Final Nego­ti­a­tion Between Share­hold­ers
Markus Dohle To Serve As CEO
Ber­tels­mann Appoints Five Board Of Direc­tors Mem­bers, Pear­son Four
All Ter­ri­to­r­i­al Reg­u­la­to­ry Approvals Received With­out Con­di­tions

Ber­tels­mann and Pear­son today signed the final con­tracts com­bin­ing the world­wide activ­i­ties of Ran­dom House and Pen­guin Group, their respec­tive trade book pub­lish­ing com­pa­nies. The trans­ac­tion com­pletes the for­ma­tion of Pen­guin Ran­dom House, announced Octo­ber 29, 2012, in which Ber­tels­mann will own 53 per­cent and Pear­son 47 per­cent. Pen­guin Ran­dom House will be com­prised of all of Ran­dom House and Pen­guin Group’s pub­lish­ing divi­sions and imprints in the U.S., Cana­da, U.K., Aus­tralia, New Zealand, and India, as well as Ran­dom House’s pub­lish­ers in Spain and Latin Amer­i­ca, and Penguin’s trade pub­lish­ing activ­i­ty in Asia and South Africa.

Annette Heuser the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Ber­tels­mann Foun­da­tion Office in Wash­ing­ton D.C. was urg­ing the U.S. to take action in Libya, alone if nece­sary, in ear­ly March of 2011.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentaries/117769498.html

Who could ques­tion the sin­cer­i­ty of her and Ber­tels­man­n’s con­cern for both the well being, and best inter­ests of the peo­ple of the Arab World, as well as the Unit­ed States?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019–03-26/michelle-obama-helps-german-media-giant-to-best-sales-since-2007
Excerpt

“Michelle Obama’s Mem­oir Pays Off for a Ger­man Media Giant
By Ste­fan Nico­la
March 26, 2019, 3:30 AM MDT Updat­ed on March 26, 2019, 5:32 AM MDT

For­mer First Lady Michelle Obama’s best-sell­ing mem­oir helped boost rev­enue last year at Ger­man media giant Ber­tels­mann SE to the high­est in more than a decade.

Bertelsmann’s Pen­guin Ran­dom House sold near­ly 10 mil­lion copies of “Becom­ing,” the account of Obama’s jour­ney from Chicago’s South Side to the White House. That helped lift Bertelsmann’s total sales to 17.7 bil­lion euros ($20 bil­lion), the high­est since 2007.

“We believe this could become the most suc­cess­ful mem­oir ever,” Ber­tels­mann Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Thomas Rabe told reporters Tues­day in Berlin.

Michelle Oba­ma Pro­motes Her New Book In New York City
Michelle Oba­ma signs copies of ’Becoming’.Photographer: Drew Angerer/Getty Images
The book’s strong sales are a boon for Rabe’s strat­e­gy to bet big on pub­lish­ing after Ber­tels­mann bought a 22 per­cent share in Pen­guin Ran­dom House from Pear­son Plc for about $1 bil­lion in 2017, rais­ing its stake to 75 per­cent.

Pen­guin Ran­dom House in 2017 agreed to pay a report­ed $65 mil­lion to pub­lish sep­a­rate books from Barack and Michelle Oba­ma. The deal extend­ed a rela­tion­ship with the pub­lish­er that stretched back to when the two-term for­mer pres­i­dent was still an Illi­nois sen­a­tor.

“Becom­ing” con­tin­ues to sell well and could become a “mod­ern clas­sic” that pro­vides con­tin­u­ous rev­enue every year, the publisher’s CEO, Markus Dohle, said. Dohle said he hopes that Barack Obama’s mem­oir will be pub­lished this year and will sell sim­i­lar­ly well.

Sales at Pen­guin Ran­dom House also rose last year thanks to a foothold in fast-grow­ing mar­kets such as India, the growth of audio books, and recent block­busters includ­ing John Grisham’s “The Reck­on­ing,” and polit­i­cal thriller “The Pres­i­dent is Miss­ing” by Bill Clin­ton and James Pat­ter­son.

Ber­tels­mann wants to increase the share of dig­i­tal rev­enue across its units, includ­ing at broad­cast­er RTL Group SA, which is try­ing to build local video stream­ing plat­forms in coun­tries from Ger­many to France. RTL’s sales rose 2.1 per­cent to a record of 6.5 bil­lion euros.

Rabe said Apple Inc.’s push into video stream­ing doesn’t over­ly con­cern him because Ber­tels­mann wants to build top local plat­forms instead of com­pet­ing for glob­al audi­ences.

“The video-on-demand mar­ket is crowd­ed,” Rabe said. “Our strat­e­gy is local, local........”

https://www.thebookseller.com/news/eu-copyright-law-reform-975521

“Trade wel­comes new EU copy­right law as MEPs approve reform
Pub­lished March 26, 2019 by Katie Mans­field”

“The Euro­pean Par­lia­ment has passed the EU’s new law on copy­right as trade bod­ies hail the first major revamp of copy­right rules in 18 years.....
As a result US tech­nol­o­gy firms will be forced to jump through extra legal hoops to take greater respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­tent they host and the new rules will also offer greater pro­tec­tion against intel­lec­tu­al copy­right infringe­ment....
Speak­ing ahead of the copy­right direc­tive vote at the Ber­tels­mann finan­cial results announce­ment this morn­ing, Ber­tels­mann c.e.o. Thomas Rabe said: “Arti­cle 13 is a com­pro­mise which took very long to get to... It is a com­pro­mise, we would have hoped for a stricter Arti­cle 13, but we are real­is­tic... What­ev­er comes out of the leg­isla­tive machin­ery in Brus­sels is always going to be a com­pro­mise, but it is a step in the right direc­tion.””

munch, munch, gulp

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-viacomcbs-m-a-bertelsmann/bertelsmann-to-acquire-simon-schuster-for-more-than-2-billion-source-idUSKBN2851E6

Ber­tels­mann buys Simon & Schus­ter for $2.2 bil­lion in U.S. pub­lish­ing play——————————————–
excerpt

Ger­man media group Ber­tels­mann has agreed to pur­chase pub­lish­er Simon & Schus­ter for $2.175 bil­lion in cash from Via­com­CBS, strength­en­ing its pres­ence in the Unit­ed States....
————————————
The deal rep­re­sents the sec­ond major move in CEO Thomas Rabe’s dri­ve to con­sol­i­date Ber­tels­mann as the world’s biggest book­seller, after the 185-year-old pub­lish­er took full con­trol of Pen­guin Ran­dom House less than a year ago...........................

Found­ed in 1835 as a pub­lish­er of the­o­log­i­cal texts, Ber­tels­mann is a pri­vate con­glom­er­ate span­ning mag­a­zine, edu­ca­tion­al and music pub­lish­ing and con­trols Euro­pean TV group RTL............................

The lack of its own pub­lic equi­ty to serve as an acqui­si­tion ‘cur­ren­cy’ has con­strained Bertelsmann’s abil­i­ty to chase big deals, even as tech giants led by Face­book and Alphabet’s Google suck up more ad dol­lars.

Yet Rabe was able to pay cash after this year build­ing a war chest of 4.3 bil­lion euros ($5.1 bil­lion) in liq­uid funds.

Rabe pulled this off by retrench­ing dur­ing the coro­n­avirus cri­sis, and sell­ing oth­er invest­ments and prop­er­ty. And, while Bertelsmann’s focus is main­ly on organ­ic growth, it has the capac­i­ty to do fur­ther deals, he added.