Kirch group

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Logo of the Kirch Group

The Kirch group was - until its bankruptcy and subsequent break-up in 2002 - after Bertelsmann, the second largest German media group . It had its headquarters in Munich and grew over the years from a film distribution company founded by the media entrepreneur Leo Kirch in 1955 and was largely in his personal property until the end. The group, whose corporate structure was recently very complex, comprised several of the largest German private television stations , including ProSieben and Sat.1 , as well as the pay-TV station Premiere World (now Sky Deutschland ). The bankruptcy was made through an interview with the then CEO of Deutsche Bank , Rolf-E. Breuer , with what triggered legal disputes for years.

On December 14, 2012, the Munich Higher Regional Court ruled that Kirch or his heirs were entitled to compensation from Deutsche Bank, the amount of which was to be determined by an expert opinion.

history

In 1955, Leo Kirch founded Sirius Film, his first company for the exploitation of film rights. Beta Film followed in 1959 and Taurus Film in 1963 . As a film rights dealer, he rose to become one of the most important and influential media entrepreneurs in Germany. The ZDF was completely dependent on him for many years and had no contacts of its own to the Hollywood film industry .

Over the decades, Kirch built a complex and confusing empire with countless subsidiaries and holdings. The Kirch Group was involved in, among other things, the Axel Springer Verlag and the television stations Sat.1 , ProSieben , Kabel 1 and DSF . In 1996 the pay-TV platform DF1 was founded , which finally merged into Premiere . After a restructuring, the Kirch Group was divided into three parent companies from 1999, which were linked to one another via KirchHolding GmbH & Co. KG (later TaurusHolding GmbH & Co. KG).

KirchMedia had to file for bankruptcy in April 2002 due to over-indebtedness (EUR 6.5 billion) . In the following months the group of companies was broken up. ProSiebenSat.1 Media AG took over the Israeli investor Haim Saban , the rights trading company BetaFilm and the classical music division Unitel the former Kirch manager Jan Mojto . The bankruptcy of Premiere was barely prevented.

Bank secrecy violation lawsuit

According to Leo Kirch, a conscious statement about the poor creditworthiness of the company by Deutsche Bank manager Rolf-E. Breuer announced the bankruptcy in a television interview. With its judgment of January 24, 2006 (AZ: XI ZR 384/03), the Federal Court of Justice of Kirch granted the right to compensation in principle. The amount of the damages should be determined in a separate judgment.

Kirch died in 2011. His heirs demanded up to 3.5 billion euros in damages. In 2012, the board of directors of Deutsche Bank rejected a fully negotiated settlement . The bank would have had to pay a good 800 million euros to settle the dispute. Negotiations for an out-of-court settlement had repeatedly failed before.

On December 14, 2012, the Munich Higher Regional Court sentenced Deutsche Bank to pay compensation to the heirs. The court considered it proven that Breuer had damaged Kirch with his controversial interview statement on the creditworthiness of the group. The amount of compensation should be determined in an expert opinion. The court has already put the amount of possible damage at 120 million to 1.5 billion euros.

On April 11, 2013, Deutsche Bank repeated its Annual General Meeting from 2012 for legal reasons.

After years of disputes, the legal dispute between the Kirch heirs and Deutsche Bank was ended by a settlement on February 20, 2014 . The bank then paid € 775 million plus interest, according to the manager magazine, a total of approx. € 925 million. In addition, there are costs for lawyers and third parties in the millions.

Bankruptcy Payouts

Creditors of the Kirch Group have a total of 1,500 insolvency claims with a volume of around 5 billion euros.

The first distribution took place in February 2007 with a rate of 8.0%. A further seven distributions took place in the following years and resulted in a total rate of 26%. With the eighth down payment, the payout ratio reached 1.3 billion.

After a total of 13 payments, almost 2 billion euros were repaid to the creditors, which corresponds to an unusually high rate of around 40% of unsecured claims. At the end of July 2018, the Munich District Court approved the so-called final distribution. The insolvency proceedings were close to their formal conclusion. Around 10,000 jobs were saved despite the media group's bankruptcy.

Corporate structure

Organizational chart of the Kirch Group in 2002 at the time of its collapse.

See also

literature

  • Robert Gehring: The rise and fall of the Kirch group. An institutional economic explanation. Working papers of the Institute for Broadcasting Economics at the University of Cologne , No. 171, August 2003, PDF

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Deutsche Bank has to pay damages to Kirch-Erben. In: Spiegel online , December 14, 2012, accessed on December 14, 2012
  2. ↑ Leo Kirch steered his media empire from the background. In: tagesspiegel.de , July 14, 2011
  3. ↑ Kirch Group has filed for bankruptcy. In: handelsblatt.com , April 8, 2002
  4. ↑ Saban wins the contract for ProSiebenSat.1. In: Spiegel online , August 5, 2003
  5. ↑ Mojto gets the beta film. In: Manager Magazin online , March 30, 2004
  6. ↑ Premiere: “Danger of bankruptcy averted”. In: handelsblatt.com , July 25, 2002
  7. ^ Comparison of Deutsche Bank with Kirch heirs fails. In: Reuters Germany , March 1, 2012
  8. ^ Deutsche Bank convicted in the Kirch trial . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , December 15, 2012, No. 293, p. 1.
  9. ↑ Deutsche Bank has to pay damages to Kirch heirs. In: sueddeutsche.de
  10. ^ Black Friday for Deutsche Bank. In: sueddeutsche.de
  11. ↑ Day of Vengeance. In: spiegel.de , April 11, 2013
  12. ↑ Deutsche Bank reaches an agreement with Kirch heirs. In: Manager-Magazin.de
  13. ↑ a b press release of the insolvency administrator. In: dgap.com , January 20, 2015
  14. ^ Henryk Hielscher, Peter Steinkirchner: KirchMedia-Pleite: Insolvency proceedings completed after 16 years. Retrieved October 1, 2018 .