Eugene Russ

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Eugen Russ (born January 6, 1961 in Bregenz ) is an Austrian media entrepreneur and, as managing director of Russmedia, is the largest publisher in Vorarlberg .

origin

Eugen Russ comes from a publishing family. His grandfather Eugen Russ (1877–1962) already published the daily Vorarlberger Landeszeitung , which was reissued after 1945 as Vorarlberger Nachrichten . After the grandfather's death, his father Toni Russ (1914–1969) took over the paper, which at that time was already the undisputed market leader in Vorarlberg. After the publisher's death, his wife Rosa Russ took over the editorial office before her son Eugen Russ took over the business.

Gabriele Nussbaumer (* 1956), Eugen Russ' older sister, sat for the Austrian People's Party (ÖVP) in the Vorarlberg state parliament and was Vice-President of the state parliament there until 2018.

In the media and other publications his name is often given as "Eugen A. Russ", although according to the baptism certificate he does not have a middle name. Russ on this in an interview: "I didn't want to go down in the company's history as a junior and just got the nickname A."

Live and act

Russ graduated from high school and then studied law in Innsbruck. As early as 1983, at the age of 22, Russ became managing director of the Vorarlberger Medienhaus group and at the same time editor-in-chief of Vorarlberger Nachrichten.

Eugen Russ has gradually expanded the group of companies he heads, expanded to Germany , Switzerland , Liechtenstein , Hungary and Romania and expanded the business by founding or buying numerous Internet companies. Despite his great journalistic power, Russ is said to have no political ambitions with his publications. Both his management style and his market behavior are considered tough: It is one of his business maxims to lay off up to four percent of the workforce every year (he calls it "underperformers"), and competitors report that he is specifically trying to discourage advertisers To do business with the competition.

He is married and has three children.

Group of companies

Eugen Russ is the managing director and majority owner of Russmedia GmbH . This belongs to 61.5% of the EAR private foundation. The remaining 38.5% belong to the family of the deceased aunt Sophie Kempf-Russ. The EAR private foundation is 98% owned by Eugen Russ and 0.5% each owned by his wife Irene and the children Eugen Benedikt, Marie Gabrielle and Isabel Nina Russ.

Russmedia publishes the two largest daily newspapers in the country by far, the Vorarlberger Nachrichten (67 percent reach in Vorarlberg, according to the Austrian media analysis ) and the Neue Vorarlberger Tageszeitung (11 percent reach). The group also operates radio stations, weekly newspapers and, in Austria, the Internet portals Vorarlberg Online and vienna.at.

The EAR private foundation also includes Media Beteiligungsgesellschaft and Piro Beteiligungsgesellschaft in Schwarzach, as well as a stake in GIC Gamma Invest Corporation in Vienna. With Inform Media , which publishes several regional newspapers in Hungary, Russ also owns the fifth largest newspaper publisher in Hungary. He also came into possession of a Romanian regional newspaper through one of the acquired Hungarian regional newspapers. He has since expanded this Romanian commitment to four regional newspapers as well as various free and advertising newspapers, based in Timișoara . In 2007 Russ also got involved in Ukraine, where he launched two regional free weekly newspapers.

In 2005 Russ was also active on the German market. He bought the German offshoot of Quoka- Verlag and has since published several classifieds papers ( SperrMüll , Kurz & Fündig , Alles, etc.) in the Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria and Hesse area. In 2006 he and Quoka took over the competitor Avis (Avis Verlag GmbH), which is active in northern and western Germany. In Liechtenstein, Russ has held a minority share in the Liechtensteiner Volksblatt since 2006. In Switzerland, Russ failed with his involvement in the publication of the free newspaper .ch , which was to find a place on the market as the fourth free daily newspaper and was the only one to offer home delivery. .ch was discontinued with the May 4, 2009 issue.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Eugen Russ , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 31/2008 from July 29, 2008, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of the article freely available)
  2. ↑ a b c d www.daten.at: "Der vom Monopol" ( Memento from July 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ↑ Harald Fidler : Österreichs Medienwelt from A to Z. Falter Verlag, Vienna 2008, p. 527 and 583
  4. ↑ a b www.media-analyse.at: Daily newspaper coverage in Vorarlberg 08/09
  5. ↑ Harald Fidler : Austria's Media World from A to Z. Falter Verlag, Vienna 2008, p. 587 f.
  6. ↑ Harald Fidler : Austria's Media World from A to Z. Falter Verlag, Vienna 2008, p. 588 f.
  7. ↑ www.diemedien.at - Updates to the book ( Memento from September 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
personal data
SURNAME Russ, Eugene
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian media entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH January 6, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH Bregenz