Leo Kirch
Leo Kirch ( born October 21, 1926 in Würzburg, † July 14, 2011 in Munich) was a German media entrepreneur. He founded in 1955 a film distribution, he had built up in the early 2000s to one of Germany's largest media groups, the Kirch Group. Leo Kirch was instrumental in the construction of private television and pay-TV in Germany. In 2002 his company went bankrupt and was smashed in the sequence. Kirch went so until his death in 2011 legal action against the German bank before. Their former CEO Rolf E. Breuer had insolvency - as is now determined by a court - triggered by an interview statement on the lack of creditworthiness of the company early 2002. Kirch, who was almost blind in his last years by a diabetes disease, was considered conservative and extremely reclusive. He was friends with, among others, the longtime German Chancellor Helmut Kohl. Kirch's great political influence through his numerous television stations, including ProSieben and Sat.1, as well as through its investments in other media groups have been partially massively criticized.
Life
Leo Kirch was born the son of a plumber and part-time vintners Robert Kirch and his wife Catherine in Würzburg and grew up in driving on Main ( today part of Volkach ) on. He attended from 1932 to 1940 the primary school in driving and then from 1940 to 1943, the secondary school in Würzburg.
In July 1943, the church was 17 -year-old drafted into the air defense. Among other things he was involved in the defense of an American bombing raid on Schweinfurt in Franconia dawn of the 14th October 1943. In April 1945, he deserted and returned to driving.
After the emergency High School in Wurzburg, he studied from 1946 mathematics and physics at the University of Würzburg. In June 1950, he was expelled from the University and then began to study business administration at the College of Economic and Social Sciences in Nuremberg. From 1952 he was an assistant at the University of Munich and dealt preferentially with the electronic media. In June 1958 he received his doctorate at the HfWS Nuremberg; His doctoral thesis was the influence of the space to the range of traffic.
In 1954, married his fellow student Ruth Weigand church. Of the marriage was 1957, the son of Thomas Kirch forth. This was in 1988 one of the two founding partners of the television station ProSieben, who was the successor of Eureka TV.
Leo Kirch died on 14 July 2011 at the age of 84 years.
Sales agents
As sales agents Leo Kirch has risen since the 1960s to become one of the most important and influential media entrepreneur in Germany. The rights for his first film, La Strada by Federico Fellini, he personally brought from Italy in 1956, he bought with borrowed money from his wife's family. He built a complex and confusing business with the countless subsidiaries and associated companies.
To this end he founded in 1955, the company Sirius film and Shopping GmbH, 1959, Beta Film and 1963, the Taurus film, which served for the distribution of films and television programs. In 1966, the founding of Unitel and 1968 the IdunaFilm for feature and television film productions and 1975, the foundation of the company BetaTechnik, as a service center of the Kirch Group, and 1983, the Taurus video. Kirch's first major acquisition was in 1985, a 10 - % stake in Axel Springer -Verlag dar.
ZDF decades was totally dependent on him and did not have its own Hollywood contacts. In order not to make a film entirely by dealer dependent, the station also wanted by other companies buy movies to come out that these companies belonged to the church. As took as competition with advent of private television stations of the church and made do business with him, ran for a few years no more Hollywood movies on ZDF.
1983 saw the church a setback when the ARD in its own negotiations acquired a large and long-term film package of Metro -Goldwyn- Mayer and United Artists and MGM / UA. This included, inter alia, the films of the James Bond series and a number of MGM's blockbusters such as The Apartment or One, Two, Three included. The classic Gone with the Wind (USA 1939) was not included in this package, because after that time the church had brought against this agreement a legal dispute with the ARD or the studio, MGM fell some rights back at him.
The ARD had thus completed the first time a separate output deal directly with a Hollywood studio. The license rights between the ARD and the studio were extended in 1997 for another ten years. But MGM was able to assert that the Payrechte rights contained in the package fell back to MGM. In 1997, the church then a license agreement for the MGM / UA films for pay-TV, and it too to ten years. Some Free- rights in the ARD package are now expired and after MGM now part of Sony Pictures Entertainment, in 2006 there were an agreement between ProSiebenSat.1 Media and MGM / SONY.
Media companies
1985 acquired Leo Kirch participation in the Axel - Springer -Verlag, in the late 1980s, he joined the television station Sat.1, mid -1990s, he founded the pay-TV provider DF1 (now Sky). At this time Leo Kirch controlled through its various investments and large parts of the German part of the European media market.
Already in the 1990s there have been reports of financial difficulties of the Kirch group to the brink of insolvency. This was due to large investments in pay-TV due to a miscalculation. In other European countries, pay TV could be operated profitably, because there were few free to air channels. However, the church tried to market his film stocks in several channels on free TV and on Premiere. Many films and TV series were even aired promptly to premiere and a free TV channels. This oversupply caused a weak sales figures. In addition, the encryption and conditional access system of Premiere decoder d-box was easy to crack, so that there were many non-paying doomsayers. Kirch has invested enormous amounts in the football league, which helped that there are the player salaries could rise sharply.
In 2002, financial difficulties of the Kirch group became known again. Therefore, the CEO of Hypo Vereinsbank Albrecht Schmidt offered him in February 2002 to more than 1.1 billion euros for Kirch's 40 - percent stake in Axel Springer AG.
In April 2002, Kirch Media had to file for bankruptcy filters ( AZ: 1502 IN 879/ 02) in the face of over 6.5 billion euros in debt and liabilities. As a result, their individual divisions were smashed. Leo Kirch withdrew from the company, but retained extensive holdings in companies in Switzerland, which did not fall into the bankruptcy estate.
In 2002, the church sued the German bank because she was wearing a debt to the insolvency of his view. This debt is from a statement by Rolf -E. Breuer, the former CEO of Deutsche Bank, derive. Breuer had relatively clearly stated in an interview with Bloomberg business channel that is known to the Kirch Group can not get any more loans. According to Kirch this statement has caused the subsequent termination of its loans by all other banks. The focus of the investigation is among other things a meeting of Leo Kirch, Rolf -E. Breuer, Thomas Middelhoff, Erich Schumann and the then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder on January 27, 2002 in a restaurant in Hanover.
After the Federal Court had decided on 24 January 2006 that only the subsidiary, which had taken the loan from Deutsche Bank (print Beteiligungs GmbH ), but not the church or the Taurus Holding Gmbh, the management company of the Kirch Group, damages attributable in principle, Kirch filed in May 2007 for the purported damages PrintBeteiligungs GmbH a power suit against the German bank in the amount of 1.6 billion euro first one ( Case Number: 33 O 9550 /07). Rolf E. Breuer had been discontinued as a result of the Supreme Court judgment on 3 May 2006 from his position as Chairman of the German bank. Essentially, it was about the Springer shares that served as collateral for the loan and were recovered after the termination of the loan from Deutsche Bank. The action was dismissed on 25 November 2008 by default judgment in part. After opposition from church against the default judgment was heard again on 23 November 2010. The lawsuit was dismissed in a judgment of the District Court of Munich I of 22 February 2011.
A lawsuit is another lawsuit for damages against the German Bank and Mr. Breuer in December 2005 as assignee of 17 shareholders of the Kirch group on 31 March 2009 by the Landgericht München I ( Az: 33 O 25598 /05 ) was completely rejected. The appeal was heard on February 25, 2011 oral argument before the Higher Regional Court of Munich, which stated that the Munich Regional Court had " gripped much too short " with the dismissal of the action. It struck March 24, 2011 before a comparison with an amount of 775 million euros, the bank rejected the German. On December 14, 2012, the Higher Regional Court of Munich ruled that church or his heirs a claim for damages by the German Bank is entitled, the amount of which must be determined by an appraisal. On February 20, 2014, a settlement was reached, after which the German bank is the church - heirs pay 775 million euros plus interest and other costs.
Comeback as a media entrepreneur
In October 2007 it was announced that the church was again entered the television rights trading: With his company Sirius GmbH he wanted from summer 2009 to market the television rights of the Bundesliga and had the Bundesliga clubs guaranteed three billion euros for a period of six years. The relevant contract was canceled under pressure from the Federal Cartel Office on 25 September 2008 by the DFL again.
Beyond The Leo Kirch attributable KF 15 GmbH holds a 17.1 percent stake in Constantin Medien AG (formerly EM Sport Media AG). For Constantin media including the TV channel Sport 1 include (formerly " Deutsches Sport Fernsehen " ), the Internet sports portal Sport1.de and the production company Plazamedia. Constantin Medien AG is also involved with 47.3 percent in Highlight Communications AG, a high proportion of the sport marketer TEAM and the German film producers Constantin has film among others.
Kirch and carbon
Leo Kirch and former Chancellor Helmut Kohl had been friends for several decades. As carbon asked by the CDU funding scandal friends and followers for donations in the amount of 6 million German marks to fix the financial loss for the CDU, the church was the largest donation (1 million DM). Kirch was also a witness at Kohl's second wedding on 8 May 2008.
Controversial consultancy agreement
In the context of press releases to insolvency of the Kirch Group was announced in 2003 that carbon had been controversial consulting contracts with the company. Kohl had three years will each receive 600,000 DM after his chancellorship, while he was sitting as a deputy in the Bundestag. Its performance should be doing " as well as strategic advice on current political developments in Germany and Europe" in personal conversations with church. A minimum performance was not fixed, according to media reports. Critics such as Hans Herbert von Arnim pointed out Kirch media and television empire had benefited during the Kohl's chancellorship of a particular church - friendly media policy. Hans- Christian Ströbele, then chairman of the Greens in party donations inquiry committee of the Bundestag, commented that the consultant contract put a " strong suspicion of subsequent payment of government action " or accepting an advantage close. Other CDU politician with very similar Kirch contracts after their term of office was the former Post and Telecommunications Minister Christian Schwarz- Schilling and Wolfgang Boetsch, their fields of activity and decisions as a minister and broadcasting councils significant impact on the German media landscape, and in particular the important Kirch private television had had. The announcement of these processes led to considerable confusion and suspicion utterances also from circles of the CDU / CSU, but had for carbon and other interested parties ultimately of no consequence, because no laws had been violated.