WMP Eurocom

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
WMP EuroCom AG
legal form AG
Seat Berlin
management Michael J. Inacker (CEO), Michael Behrens (COO), Katrin Dahm (CFO)
Website www.wmp-ag.de

The WMP EuroCom AG , headquartered in Berlin is a German communications consultancy in the fields of business, media and politics. It has further offices in Hamburg , Frankfurt am Main , Munich and Brussels .

organization

The main shareholder is the chairman of the supervisory board Hans-Hermann Tiedje , the deputy chairman of the supervisory board is Wendelin Wiedeking . The chairman of the board is Michael J. Inacker , the other board members are Michael Behrens, responsible for operational activities, and Katrin Dahm, responsible for finances. In addition to Hans-Hermann Tiedje and the long-time Porsche boss Wendelin Wiedeking, Eckhard Cordes (former chairman of the Eastern Committee of German Business), Hans Eichel ( former Federal Minister of Finance), Ulrich Marseille (Marseille-Kliniken), Kristin Schwarz (Schwarz Cranz) and Reinhardt Töpel (ReiCo Logistik). The company was founded and financed in 1998 by Ulf Rittinghaus and Ernst-Wilhelm Rittinghaus, whose shares were acquired by Wendelin Wiedeking twelve years later. Michael Fuchs has also been a member of the staff since October 2017 (from 2002 to 2017 member of the German Bundestag , from 2009 deputy chairman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group ), who has worked there as a senior advisor and since 2018 as a supervisory board.

WMP EuroCom AG has five wholly-owned subsidiaries, WMP GmbH in Berlin , TV Media Medienmanagement GmbH in Munich , and GPA German Public Affairs GmbH in Hamburg , all of which are also active in the field of communications consulting. In addition, WMP Healthcare GmbH and WMP Finanzkommunikation GmbH belong to WMP AG.

Since 2016, WMP AG has been involved in the German AIDS Foundation on the Board of Trustees for the Berlin Opera Gala, which the foundation organizes annually, and has been a partner of the help and hope foundation , which supports disadvantaged children and young people, since 2018 .

Controversy

The government of Qatar is one of the firm's clients .

WMP returned the mandate for Saudi Arabia for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi after the BamS reported on the mandate in November 2018. Previously, WMP had hired the former German ambassador to Riyadh, Dieter Haller , as a senior advisor and aroused media criticism because of possible confusion of interests .

WMP attracted public attention at the end of 2003 in connection with a consulting contract with the Federal Employment Agency and its boss Florian Gerster . WMP gave the order back prematurely after the administrative board of the Federal Employment Agency complained that the project had not been properly advertised by the board.

In December 2015, Stern magazine published a critical article accusing the company of "covert negative PR" against Google on behalf of Microsoft. The case was then brought before the German Council for Public Relations (DRPR). The latter was unable to find “any indications of an order from Microsoft or WMP”, “which substantiate a covert PR from Microsoft or WMP” and dismissed the complaint as unfounded.

On November 29, 2018, Bild am Sonntag published excerpts from an internal presentation by WMP Eurocom. Accordingly, the WMP Eurocom tried to lobby for Saudi Arabia in Germany. In this presentation, the WMP presented a number of well-known journalists from major German media "to the Saudis as being influenced or already influenced," said Marion Horn , editor-in-chief of Bild am Sonntag on Twitter. In the presentation, the WMP Eurocom also claimed to have access to politics, such as Federal President Frank Walter Steinmeier and the Federal Chancellery. The former chairman of the Greens in the German Bundestag, Rezzo Schlauch, who had been on the supervisory board of WMP Eurocom AG since 2016, resigned his mandate with immediate effect.

The magazine Stern reported on December 5, 2018 that the political contacts of the WMP Eurocom listed in the presentation for Saudi Arabia may not correspond to the facts, as all politicians objected to a commitment to Saudi Arabia, in some cases violently. For example, the President of the Bundestag Wolfgang Schäuble had alleged contacts with WMP Eurocom rejected as "allegations" and "irrelevant" through his spokesman. The answer of the Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy of January 31, 2019 to a small request from the AfD parliamentary group on "Meetings of members and employees of the federal government with representatives of WMP Eurocom AG" lists meetings between government representatives and WMP AG since 2000 on, whereby a “complete list of the contacts and meetings asked for with the company mentioned cannot be guaranteed” and states: “The Federal Government is in principle in constant exchange with all representatives in the economic policy area”.

literature

Web links

Footnotes

  1. ↑ WMP EuroCom AG: Contact and locations.
  2. ^ WMP EuroCom AG: The Supervisory Board
  3. ^ WMP EuroCom AG: The board of directors
  4. ↑ Klaus Boldt: New job for ex-Porsche boss: More punch with Wendelin . In: manager magazin . January 18, 2011.
  5. ^ N-TV: "Eckhard Cordes hands over to Büchele"
  6. ↑ Eichel Supervisory Board at WMP Eurocom . In: Politics & Communication. May 25, 2010.
  7. ^ WMP EuroCom AG: The Supervisory Board wmp-ag.de
  8. ↑ Control and advice . In: prmagazin . October 9, 2012
  9. ↑ WMP Eurocom AG: The Bellheims of the media industry . In: Tagesspiegel . 4th July 2000
  10. ↑ Fuchs is Senior Advisor at WMP Eurocom. politik-kommunikation.de, October 2, 2017, accessed October 4, 2017 .
  11. ^ WMP AG: Health Policy.
  12. ↑ Press portal: “WMP Eurocom strengthens financial communication in Frankfurt”.
  13. ↑ Annual report of the German AIDS Foundation. (PDF).
  14. ↑ help and hope News 4/2018 (PDF).
  15. ↑ Politics: Public Relations for Despots: How PR professionals clean up Erdogan's image. In: Der Spiegel Online. Retrieved June 14, 2017 .
  16. ^ German lobbyists promote the Saudis. In: FAZ (Company) , November 25, 2018.
  17. ↑ Meedia: “Bild-Zeitung took exactly the support that it is now pillorying”: WMP boss Inacker criticizes the BamS's “blood sheikh” revelation. (Interview with Michael Inacker, CEO of WMP Eurocom) 26 . November 2018
  18. ↑ Ex-ambassador involved ?: German lobbyists promote the Saudis . ISSN  0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed September 24, 2019]).
  19. ↑ Ex-German ambassador in Saudi Arabia changes to a PR agency of the Saudis. October 30, 2018, accessed September 24, 2019 .
  20. ^ Federal Labor Office: Gerster's expensive BMW fleet . In: Spiegel online . December 6, 2003
  21. ^ BA board of directors withdraws trust in Gerster ( memento of May 26, 2004 in the Internet Archive ). In: Netzeitung . January 24, 2004
  22. ↑ stern.de
  23. ↑ Microsoft is supposed to lead a secret smear campaign against Google. In: derStandard.at. December 17, 2015, accessed December 12, 2017 .
  24. ↑ PDF of the Council decision: DRPR procedure 12/2015 Complaints Committee for Companies and the Market Case: Microsoft / WMP Google.
  25. ^ Saudi Arabia: This is how German lobbyists advertise the Saudi Prince . In: image . ( bild.de [accessed on December 2, 2018]).
  26. ↑ Marion Horn (@marionhorn). Twitter, accessed December 2, 2018 .
  27. ↑ Rezzo hose: Grüner leaves PR company because of Blood Sheik . In: image . ( bild.de [accessed on December 2, 2018]).
  28. ^ Politicians angry with the Saudis' former lobbying agency in Berlin. December 5, 2018, accessed December 5, 2018 .
  29. ↑ bmwi.de PDF of the BMWI's answer to “Kl. Request for meetings of members and employees of the federal government with representatives of WMP Eurocom AG "