Thomas Haffa
Thomas Haffa ( born April 18, 1952 in Kressbronn ) is a German media entrepreneur. He is married and has two children.
Haffa as CEO of EM.TV, one of the companies with very spectacular rise and fall very low on the former Stock Exchange Neuer Markt segment became known. In 2010 Haffa took with an estimated fortune of 200 to 300 million euros in the list of richest people in Germany to place a 229.
Professional career
After the demolition of the school, who grew up in Oberpfaffenhofen Haffa did an apprenticeship as a wholesale and foreign trade clerk at a BMW dealer, after which he worked from 1973 as a sales assistant at IBM. Beginning of the 1980s began Haffa at the Kirch Group and built the first video segment Taurus video. Over the next few years he worked his way up to managing director of merchandising and music publishing.
1989 Haffa became self-employed and founded together with his brother Florian and the TV mogul Haim Saban EM Entertainment Munich, Merchandising, Film and Television GmbH ( EM.TV ). Marketing objects from this period are, for example, Tabaluga, the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and the rights to the Expo 2000.
With the IPO on 30 October 1997 initially began a spectacular rise of EM.TV: The issue price of ( split-adjusted ) 0.38 euro followed a record high after another, including also through the establishment of Junior TV end of 1998 together with the troubled Kirch Group. In the wake of the New Economy as a 50% share of the commercial rights of Formula 1 Haffa made by another spectacular acquisitions in 2000 ( for about 3.3 billion euros ) and the parent company of the Muppets Show EM.TV into a global media company. Then there were the worldwide rights to famous cartoon characters such as Maya the Bee, Fred Flintstone and Alfred J. Kwak. The share certificates of EM.TV recorded in March 2000 with 110 euro peaked.
In the fall of 2000 had Thomas Haffa and his brother Florian, who worked as CFO at EM.TV, correct the profit expectation of the company downwards several times. The share price fell and then fell below 20 euros.
The brothers Thomas and Florian Haffa had sold a timely manner prior to the announcement of negative news and the strong price decline most of their EM.TV shares. Thomas Haffa had violated even against the holding period, when he sold in February 2000 on the course climax shares.
Thomas Haffa resigned as CEO of EM.TV on 25 July 2001. He was sentenced to a fine of 1.2 million euros due to incorrect representation of business conditions on 8 April 2003, his brother Florian to 240,000 euros. The Federal Court confirmed the end of 2004 this judgment, the Constitutional Court dismissed a complaint from the 2006 Haffa brothers as " unfounded" back. They were thus condemned finally prosecuted. Both brothers had to face a total of hundreds of lawsuits. Despite a landmark ruling of the Federal Court in favor of injured shareholders EM.TV many shareholders were not successful in their claims for damages because of the required proof of a direct link between the faulty company reports and stock purchase decision was difficult to establish.
2004 a group of investors led by Thomas Haffa the operations of the fallen into insolvency Ulm commercial vehicle company Koegel was transferred AG. 2009 had one more time to file for bankruptcy Koegel.
Thomas Haffa is CEO of the Munich-based airline Air Independence. In the spring of 2010, he acquired the majority stake in the shopping channel Channel 21 Moreover he bought with his wife Gabriele in May 2010, the ship trading company Dahm International, based in Mallorca, which is one of the world's biggest yacht dealers.