It is a step that means a complete restructuring and is likely to cause great unrest in the media company and its workforce: Axel Springer SE has announced the split of its business areas.
For the first time since 1985, Springer will once again be a family business, completely in private hands and under the control of Springer CEO and major shareholder Mathias Döpfner and publishing heiress Friede Springer. Both hold 98 percent of the shares, the remaining shares will be retained by Axel Sven Springer, a grandson of the company founder. The media brands will be bundled in this company, i.e. Picture, World and Politico.
Independently of this, there will be a company that will combine the far more profitable classified ad business such as job portals (Stepstone) and real estate (Aviv). The US financial investor KKR and the Canadian pension fund CPP Investments will hold the majority of this company. Döpfner and Friede Springer will only hold a minority stake in this company.

:It would be good to break up Springer. Media does not belong in the hands of financial investors.
Döpfner writes: “I myself will sign a new five-year contract.”
It was a clear plan “that Axel Springer would one day be a family business again,” said 82-year-old Friede Springer. “The fact that this idea is now becoming a reality fills me with great joy.” The deal is to be finalized in the coming months and, if the antitrust authorities agree, will be completed in the spring quarter of 2025. Axel Springer will be debt-free in the future, it was said.
The transaction is accompanied by a radical restructuring of the management board. The management structure at Axel Springer is being drastically streamlined. Jan Bayer is to become the new chairman of the supervisory board. Ralph Büchi is to step down as chairman of the supervisory board. He will become the founding chairman of “a new advisory board of Axel Springer, which will provide strategic advice to the management board.”
Julian Deutz is to become CEO of the newly founded company AS Classifieds and will thus take care of Springer’s minority share in the non-media offerings. Mark Dekan will be CFO, Claudius Senst Chief Operating Officer at Axel Springer. “Yes, that’s three men – but I am convinced that this is the right team for the next phase of the company,” wrote Döpfner. in a message to Springer employees.
Further personnel changes concern the management of the journalistic services: Carolin Hulshoff Pol is to become CEO of Picture-Group, Peter Würtenberger CEO of World-Group. According to Springer, the previous board member Niddal Salah-Eldin has decided to leave the board and the company as part of the structural change and to “personally support her war-torn homeland of Sudan and its people”.
Nothing will change in Döpfner’s overriding role at Springer and the publisher’s head’s power. “I will sign a new five-year contract and remain chairman of a new board,” said Döpfner.