Paul-Bernhard Kallen is giving up his job as head of the media company Burda at the end of the year. The man, who comes from Neuss near Düsseldorf, has been working for the company for 25 years. He joined the board in 1999, and in 2010 he took over the management of the publisher Hubert Burda. Kallen was the first stranger to head the family business. He has like the company that for many decades was mainly a publishing house with magazines Focus, colorful, girlfriend or Leisure review was expanded into a European digital and media company. In 2020 sales were 2.8 billion euros and 11,000 people are employed. Burda also includes the Xing professional network and the holiday booking platform Holidaycheck.
Kallen comes from a Rhenish entrepreneurial family in which, as he once said, “either an entrepreneur or a priest” was made. “But it was always clear to me that I was an entrepreneur, by the way, in a company that didn’t belong to me,” said Kallen in the SZ interview. He didn’t plan to stay there for 25 years. Today, however, Burda is a company that is “able to travel”, which means that it can always adapt to changes in the media industry. Kallen apparently sees this as a kind of legacy.
Kallen repeatedly called for strict regulation, for example from Facebook
The 64-year-old, who has a close relationship with Hubert Burda, will in future concentrate on chairing the administrative board, said Burda. He has held the job since 2017. The committee represents the interests of the shareholders, that is Hubert Burda and his two children Elisabeth Furtwängler and Jacob Burda. Kallen’s successor at the top of the group will be Martin Weiss, 54, who has been with Burda since 2015 and has been a board member responsible for international activities and the investment business since 2017.
Katharina Herrmann takes over the newly created HR department on the board, Philipp Welte continues to be responsible for the national publishing business, Holger Eckstein remains CFO. On Thursday, 81-year-old Hubert Burda announced on leaving Kallens as CEO: “Every day in the past few years I could be sure that he … was making the right decisions.”