Germany's biggest media company, founded in 1835 by Carl Bertelsmann as a publisher of religious literature in Gütersloh, where its headquarters remain. Through decades of acquisitions it has become one of the world's most important media conglomerates. Its businesses include Penguin Random House, a book-publishing behemoth (acquired by buying Penguin from Pearson and merging it with Random House); RTL, a pan-European television-and-radio broadcaster; and BMG, the world's fourth-biggest record label after Universal, Sony and Warner, whose artists include Kylie Minogue, Lenny Kravitz and Bruno Mars. It operates across 50 countries and employs around 75,000 people.
Bertelsmann is entirely owned by the Mohn clan, descendants of its founder, alongside various family foundations. The last family member to run the business, Reinhard Mohn, retired in 1981. Thomas Rabe, chief executive since 2012, grew revenue from €15bn (2011) to €19bn and group profit from €600m to €1bn, while significantly increasing the company's exposure to America, which accounted for 27% of revenue in 2024, up from 14% in 2011.
Several of Rabe's efforts to expand were thwarted. An American court blocked an attempt to combine Penguin Random House with Simon & Schuster. Dutch antitrust authorities prevented a merger of RTL's subsidiary in the country with Talpa. French regulators barred a merger of M6, RTL's channel in France, with TF1.
Rabe plans to step down by the end of 2026. Christoph Mohn, a son of Reinhard and chairman of the board, is widely expected to choose either Carsten Coesfeld (born c. 1987), who runs Bertelsmann's private-equity arm, or his brother Thomas Coesfeld (born c. 1990), who runs BMG. They are grandchildren of Reinhard Mohn and his first wife, Magdalene, while Christoph is the son of Reinhard and his second wife, Liz, the product of an affair conducted during the first marriage.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.