Following a year of reorganisation under the leadership of Olaf Koch as Chairman of the Board of Directors, the Executive Board has been substantially reconstituted with effect from 1 January 2026.
Six German publishing houses have formed a strategic coalition to develop the press distribution system further on behalf of the entire publishing industry: Bauer Media Group, Hubert Burda Media, Funke Mediengruppe, Mediengruppe Klambt, SPIEGEL-Verlag and Axel Springer. The coalition partners aim to ensure plurality of the press and freedom of press and opinion in Germany, which is unique throughout the world, based on area-wide and non-discriminatory distribution of newspapers and magazines. The coalition is expressly committed to the wholesale system’s focus on solidarity and its fundamental values.
Publishers face economic challenges in view of changed media use and resulting decrease in circulation and turnover. Modernizing the press distribution system will, from the point of view of the coalition, enable the publishing industry to fulfill its task to create press diversity based on high-quality journalism while being able to operate profitably in order to maintain its innovative power in the future.
“Germany has the best press distribution system in the world; it is the basis of the unique plurality of media and opinion in Germany. Our task is now to modernize this system in such a way that it will continue to be the healthy lifeline of our industry in the reality of the 21st Century”, says board member Philipp Welte.
The alliance aims to make the system more efficient and just in terms of cost causation and value creation together with press wholesalers and Verband Presse-Grosso over the coming months. The solution found by then is intended to supersede the trade margin agreement valid today that ends in February 2018.
