Meet the Bauer family: the now global magazine dynasty comes down under
In a feature written for his website Flashes and Flames which appeared in this week’s Encore, former ACP CEO Colin Morrison investigates the history of German publisher Bauer and asks how the notoriously private company will fare Down Under.
Bauer is the secretive, private company which has leapt, in two dramatic deals, from being Germany’s largest publisher to a world leader employing 11,000 people with a turnover of €2.5bn (A$3.2bn) from 570 magazines, 300 digital services and 50 TV and radio stations across 16 countries. Some 70 per cent of revenues now come from outside Germany. But paying €1.5bn (A$1.9bn) for market leadership in magazines in the UK, Australia and New Zealand is only the start of the challenge in churning media markets. And the scale brings profile and scrutiny. Will the Bauer family’s new generation sink or swim in the glare of publicity?
Much of the challenge will be down to 30-something Yvonne Bauer, who has become the fifth generation boss of a family business which dates back to 1875. That was when the young Ludolph Bauer went into business as a printer on a borrowed press in his Hamburg home. Ten years later, Bauer and his son Heinrich became publishers with the free newspapers Rothenburgsorter Zeitung and Hammerbrooker Zeitung. By 1927, when they had moved to the city address that has been the Bauer headquarters ever since, the family had achieved its greatest success with a circulation of 500,000 for the weekly Rundfunkkritik. They were on their way.
Post-war, Bauer quickly became the country’s largest magazine publisher with the launch of the illustrated weekly Quick in 1948, and the best selling TV listings magazine Horen und Sehen, which is still selling more than 700,000 copies. Along the way, Bauer bought magazine and children’s comic companies culminating in the acquisition of Neue Post, still one of Germany’s biggest-selling women’s weeklies. That was in 1961, the year the 22-year-old Heinz Bauer, great grandson of the company’s founder, became CEO.
