Thomas Coesfeld will lead German media conglomerate Bertelsmann after a succession battle with his older brother.Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters
The 35-year-old scion of a European family dynasty will take over German media conglomerate Bertelsmann, which owns book publisher Penguin Random House and music label BMG, after winning what was widely seen as a succession battle with his older brother.
Bertelsmann said on Thursday that Thomas Coesfeld will become chairman and chief executive officer starting in 2027 after the contract for current leader Thomas Rabe expires at the end of next year.
Mr. Coesfeld is a seventh-generation member of the European family that founded Bertelsmann in 1835 and maintains control to this day, through direct ownership and foundations.
While the Bertelsmann name might not register much in North America, the company headquartered in the German town of Gütersloh wields a heavy influence.
Its Penguin Random House division is a major book publisher in Canada, dwarfing homegrown imprints and affording the international conglomerate sway over Canadian culture. BMG, meanwhile, is the fourth-largest music company in the world and represents Kylie Minogue, Bruno Mars and Jelly Roll. (Other assets include European broadcaster RTL Group.)
Bertelsmann ownership of Penguin Random House gives it influence over Canadian culture.Tim Ireland/The Associated Press
Mr. Coesfeld has run BMG since 2023, while his older brother, Carsten, heads Bertelsmann’s investment arm. Both have been groomed for top roles for some time. When the brothers were 11 and 14, respectively, they were asked to Sunday tea by their grandparents, according to the Financial Times, who broached the possibility of the two joining the company some day.
The younger Coesfeld spent time at McKinsey and Co. and Carsten worked at Goldman Sachs before they took roles with Bertelsmann. The succession speculation, including whether the brothers could be appointed co-CEOs, kicked off when current leader Mr. Rabe announced his planned departure in March, 2024. Both brothers joined the board that year, but the elder Carsten was initially seen as the likelier successor, as per German media.
If there was an intense brotherly battle, it would appear to have been a respectful one, or at least kept mostly under wraps, even as some industry observers compared the situation with the HBO show Succession.
In a joint interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel in 2023, the brothers were exceedingly deferential to one another, almost as if the routine was choreographed, according to the report. In recent months, there has been a lack of tawdry headlines about feuding brothers or reports of embarrassing family drama that has dogged other business dynasties, such as the Bronfmans and the Rogers.
The same can’t be said of Mr. Coesfeld’s grandfather, Reinhard Mohn, the last family member to head Bertelsmann until his departure in 1981.
The married 37-year-old with three children struck up an affair with a much younger employee and had three more children with her, keeping the relationship under wraps for years. He later married her. His second wife, Liz Mohn, became heavily involved with Bertelsmann and remains on its supervisory board of directors. Relations between the two branches of the family, according to Der Spiegel, have been understandably frosty over the years.
The issues swirling around Bertelsmann these days are of the more prosaic business variety, such as the challenges of growing a media conglomerate in the streaming era and the disruption posed by artificial intelligence.
The company suffered a string of setbacks under Mr. Rabe in recent years. A blockbuster merger between Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster was challenged by the U.S. Department of Justice and later scuttled by a court in 2022 after finding that the US$2.2-billion deal would harm competition and decrease author compensation. Two other planned mergers, both in Europe, also fell through around the same time.
Meanwhile, Bertelsmann has taken steps to embrace AI across its organization, entering into a partnership with OpenAI earlier this year. Bertelsmann has said it will give some journalists at RTL access to AI tools to assist with investigations, and use the technology to hone book recommendations at Penguin Random House.
In a profile of Thomas Coesfeld published on Bertelsmann’s website last year, he said that AI presents huge challenges with respect to copyright and ensuring the rights of musicians are respected, but that it also presents new ways of creating and improving music.
Carsten, meanwhile, seems to have put to rest any speculation of hard feelings with a LinkedIn post Thursday about his sibling’s new role. “I’m genuinely happy for him,” he wrote, “both as a colleague and as a brother.”