7 BERTELSMANN AG Officers: Gunter Thielen, 60, chairman-CEO; Siegfried Luther, 58, deputy chairman-CFO CEO Thomas Middelhoff, 49, was abruptly shown the door in July after clashing with Bertelsmann's largest shareholders -- the Gutersloh, Germany-based Mohn family -- over his plans to take the company public in 2005 and his attempt to make Europe's largest commercial broadcaster a global player. Thielen immediately recast Middelhoff's unwieldy conglomerate, selling off peripheral operations for needed cash and eating its investment in the ill-fated file-swapping service Napster. The 2005 IPO, for now, is still on. Cost-cutting at Random House's best-seller factory and a rebounding music division -- expected to post $125 million in profits this year partly on the strength of Pink and Avril Lavigne -- can't hurt its chances. But Clive Calder is forcing Thielen to buy out the remaining shares of his Zomba Music -- to an estimated tune of $3 billion. As Avril would say, Why do things have to be so complicated?

Originally posted Oct 18, 2002 Published in issue #678 Oct 18, 2002 Order article reprints
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