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Brief Portrait

Axel Springer AG wants to become the leading digital media company. The digital media channels already contribute over a third of Group revenues today, more than any other division.

One of Europe's largest media companies also started off in a kind of garage. Axel Springer founded his publishing house in Hamburg in 1946; the editors spent the first year working above a warehouse for tea and spices, often without electricity and using borrowed typewriters.

With the invention of the HAMBURGER ABENDBLATT, the founding of HÖRZU and BILD as well as of the early acquisition of DIE WELT, Axel Springer laid the foundations for the success of his company.

As a result of consistent internationalization and digitization, Axel Springer AG today is not only market leader in the German print business, but is also active in 44 countries through subsidiaries, joint ventures and licenses. Axel Springer AG generates more than a third of its turnover with its international business and with digital media.

Now it is a question of pressing ahead with digitization even faster and more vigorously. For Axel Springer AG, informative and entertaining journalism is a viable business model also in future on the Internet, along with marketing and classifieds, the other two business segments in which the company is traditionally strong.

In the tradition of its founder, who fostered journalistic and technological innovations in his time, Axel Springer AG is breaking new ground. The company is consistently pursuing the objective of building up a fast-growing and profitable digital portfolio, and for this reason is networking today more than ever before with the current generation of founders: digital start-ups. Along with the transformation of our established strong media brands, our own new developments online and strategically-oriented acquisitions of web companies, this network is one of the building blocks of the company's international digitization strategy: Axel Springer AG wants to be the leading digital media company.

Starting the MEDIA ENTREPRENEURS Campaign: The viral video

 

Facts

Employees	13,651
Total revenues	€ 3,310.3 million
Operating profit (EBITDA)	€ 628 million
Headquarters	Berlin
Listed on stock exchange	Since 1985, since 2010 listed in the MDAX
Active worldwide	In 44 countries
Data refers to financial year 2012.