Beat Curti

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Beat Curti (1982)

Beat Curti (born November 4, 1937 ) is a Swiss entrepreneur in the retail and media sector .

education

Beat Curti studied oenology and business administration at the University of Lausanne , where he received his doctorate in 1971 with a thesis on the subject of "Determining the location of shopping centers". He also completed the Program for Management Development (PMD) at Harvard Business School . For six years he then worked as a management consultant for McKinsey in Europe, the USA and Asia.

Media industry

In 1974, Curti was appointed to the management of Jean Frey AG by the publisher Max Frey : As CEO, he was supposed to lead the company as an interim solution until Frey's son Marc took over this position. In this role, Curti launched the business magazine Bilanz . In 1981 Curti handed over the management of the publishing house to Marc Frey.

As early as 1979 Curti bought the Observer , the Swiss magazine with the highest circulation at the time, from its owner at the time, Max Ras. When Max Frey sold the Annabelle , Zürcher Tagblatt and Züri Leu titles to today's Tamedia in 1981 and Hans Heinrich Coninx immediately discontinued the Züri Leu free paper , Curti established the Züri-Woche in its place , a bourgeois newspaper with editor-in-chief Karl Lüönd . The Züri-Woche as well as the Observer were very successful in the advertising business and provided the capital for later investments, such as the purchase of Börsig Verlag in 1983 or the entry into Radio Z in 1984.

In 1986 Curti launched the magazine Politik und Wirtschaft (as a competitor to the balance sheet ) and - together with five regional publishers - the free newspaper Neues Sonntagsblatt (as a competitor to the SonntagsZeitung ). However, the Neue Sonntagsblatt soon had to be discontinued after the publisher of the Berner Zeitung surprisingly ended the cooperation. The joint venture with his former employer, Jean Frey Verlag (which had belonged to Werner K. Rey's Omni Holding since 1987 ) was more successful : in 1990, the Winterthur printing company became one of the most modern and largest offset printing companies in Europe.

In 1991, in the Omni Holding estate proceedings, Curti secured both Jean Frey AG and Druckerei Winterthur AG, thus creating the starting point to take on Ringier , Tages-Anzeiger and NZZ . Due to the bad economy, however, he had to resize or discontinue various titles in the 1990s. This, as well as the failed attempt to reorient the Weltwoche, led to an open conflict between Curti and the journalists of his publishing house - especially when Curti was charged in 1994 in the bribery case involving the Zurich chief official Raphael Huber (which ended, however, with an acquittal). As a result, Curti gradually sold the publisher to the Basler Zeitung .

In the 1990s Curti tried to gain a foothold in the field of electronic media. In 1992 he received approval for a Swiss advertising window on RTL . Curti Medien's application for a license (together with other Swiss publishers) for the commercial broadcaster RTL Switzerland was rejected in 1994. A Swiss program window on the two channels RTL and Sat 1 had to be closed in March 2000 after only seven months due to a lack of profitability.

Beat Curti also had little success in the field of online media: Swisscontent, which was founded as a content provider for web portals, got sucked into the new economy crisis when the main customer, the Yellowgate portal of Swiss Post , terminated the collaboration.

As the largest shareholder in the advertising marketer Goldbach Media , Curti is still involved in the field of electronic media today.

Retail trade

While still working at Jean Frey Verlag, Curti took over the management of his father's colonial goods company Curti & Co in 1975 after the death of his brother Hans Edi Curti, which he merged with the competitor Hofer & Co to form Hofer & Curti AG. In the following years, Alfred Hofer and Beat Curti bought various local wholesalers and turned them into cash-and-carry stores for restaurateurs and independent retailers (pick-up wholesalers) under the name Prodega , while Howeg supplied the catering trade (delivery wholesalers).

Hofer & Curti entered the retail trade in 1982 by purchasing Pick Pay from its founder Bruno Gideon (1931–2015), in which Curti was able to prevail against Karl Schweri . Pick Pay benefited from the fact that Migros is not allowed to sell alcoholic beverages and tobacco products: Thanks to good contacts with the Migros management, Curti was able to rent his shops in the immediate vicinity of Migros branches. In 1989 Fritz Steiger's discount perfumeries were added, which later became the import perfumeries .

In just seven years Curti was able to quadruple the number of Pick-Pay branches. To finance further growth, he brought Prodega to the stock exchange in 1985 and Pick Pay in 1986, but kept the majority of the shares in each case. Curti succeeded in the last decisive acquisition with the takeover of Usego , whereby he again prevailed against Karl Schweri: He had already secretly acquired a majority stake in Usego, but was able to do so because of the resistance of the main shareholders - the three big banks Schweizerische Bankgesellschaft (SBG), Schweizerischer Bankverein (SBV) and Schweizerische Kreditanstalt (SKA) - do not have them entered in the share register. The stalemate was resolved in 1990 in such a way that Curti acquired Usego, while Waro, which also belongs to Usego Trimerco Holding, went to Schweri. In addition, Curti assured in a secret agreement not to operate more than 106 Pick-Pay branches (which were in direct competition with Schweris Denner branches).

Another corporate division was created through the gradual takeover of the Schweizerische Speisewagen-Gesellschaft (SSG) from 1987: The passaggio resulting from this finally covered a wide variety of areas of mobile catering (in addition to dining cars, motorway service stations, train station buffets, airport restaurants, fast food outlets).

In May 1999, Curti merged Bon appétit Holding and Usego Hofer Curti (UHC) to form the new Bon appétit Group , which with almost 6,000 employees generated sales of CHF 3.3 billion and is heavily involved in the emerging e-commerce. The expansive strategy (including Starbucks license for Switzerland and Austria), however, led to an initial financial bottleneck, which made the sale of the passaggio necessary. The bursting of the stock market bubble in 2002, the tougher competition in the core business from Migros and Coop as well as enormous costs in the IT area finally led to an acute crisis which also made massive management errors clear. Other corporate units had to be divested: the Starbucks license was returned, Le Shop was sold to Migros, and the Gourmet Factory was taken over by Jelmoli . Curti sold the rest of the Bon appétit Group on June 11, 2003 for CHF 266 million to the German Rewe Group .

Miscellaneous

Beat Curti was married to Monika von Stockar from 1970 to 1975. He is in his second marriage to Regula Curti. At the wedding of their mutual friend Tina Turner , he performed the Buddhist wedding ceremony in 2013.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ DNB 571891446
  2. ↑ Annual Report Goldbach Media Gruppe 2007, p. 111  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.adlinkmedia.ch  
  3. ↑ Daniel Meier: Masters in letting go. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . 5th October 2015
  4. ↑ Bryan Adams sings for Tina Turner. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung . 22. July 2013
personal data
SURNAME Curti, beat
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss entrepreneur (retail, media)
DATE OF BIRTH November 4, 1937