Business News
Gruner + Jahr combines all foreign operations into the G+J International division led by Dr. Torsten-Jörn Klein / Fabrice Boé resigns from Gruner + Jahr Executive Board
Tuesday 15. September 2009 - Gruner + Jahr is rearranging its international organization and is once again combining all its foreign operations, including G+J France, into the G+J International division led by G+J Executive Board member Dr. Torsten-Jörn Klein. As part of the reorganization, Fabrice Boé will resign from the G+J Executive Board and from his duties as CEO of G+J France, with effect from October 1, 2009.
He will continue to serve the G+J Executive Board as a consultant on international strategic issues. Boé had been appointed to the Executive Board of Gruner + Jahr in January 2006, and in this capacity represented the French subsidiary on the top management body of Europe’s biggest magazine publisher.
Against the backdrop of the bundling of foreign activities and Boé’s subsequent resignation from the Board, G+J Executive Board member Dr. Torsten-Jörn Klein is taking over responsibility for G+J France in addition to his duties as head of G+J International. In the past, all foreign activities in the G+J International division had once before been bundled under Axel Ganz, Boé’s predecessor on the G+J Executive Board and at the helm of G+J France.
The Executive Board has also appointed Rolf Heinz as future CEO of G+J France, and Pierre Riandet as CFO. They will take over the leadership of Prisma Presse on 1 October 2009. Heinz will report directly to Torsten-Jörn Klein. The current G+J France CFO Jean-Pierre Caffin, 65, who originally intended to
retire this summer, will put his expertise at the new management’s service until 31 October 2009, before retiring.
Heinz, 43, has been CEO of the Italian joint venture G+J/Mondadori since September 2005. After working for the Bauer, Jahreszeiten and Deutsche Supplement imprints, the half German, half Spanish political science graduate and businessman joined G+J’s International Magazine division in 2000, where he served as the head of G+J Executive Board member Axel Ganz’s staff unit in Paris from 2002. In February 2004, Rolf Heinz moved to Hamburg as Executive Vice President of the G+J International division.
Pierre Riandet, 43, has been Executive Vice President of the International Magazines division at G+J International since November 2005. Riandet, a Frenchman, earned his degree in business administration from Dijon and Paris. Following professional stints at Arthur Andersen & Co., the Treuhandanstalt Trust Agency and Dow Chemicals & Plastics, he joined Coca Cola Erfrischungsgetränke AG in 1997. He has served as head of the Finance department at Berliner Verlag since November 2000, when it was still a G+J subsidiary.
Hartmut Ostrowski, Chairman of the Gruner + Jahr AG Supervisory Board, commented: “Fabrice Boé headed the French G+J subsidiary Prisma Presse for more than four years. Under his leadership, the media company held its own very well in a difficult market environment and successfully expanded into new business fields in good time. I thank him cordially on behalf of the Supervisory Board.”
Bernd Buchholz, CEO of Gruner + Jahr AG, said: “I thank Boé Fabrice for his outstanding work in strengthening the market position of Gruner + Jahr France in recent years. I am pleased to be able to count on his international expertise in the future as well. In Rolf Heinz and Pierre Riandet we have two very experienced international media managers at the head of Prisma Presse, who developed their previous areas of responsibility at G+J with great success. I wish them all the best for the future as well.”
www.guj.de
{module Tell A Friend Module|none}