Bild

Logo of Bild

Bild was founded in 1952 by Axel Springer and is the highest-circulation daily newspaper in Germany and was also the highest-circulation newspaper in Europe for a long time. It is known for its tabloid reporting and is highly polarizing. The newspaper has a paid circulation of 965,748 copies. Its website, Bild.de, is one of the most visited news sites in Germany. Bild's reporting has been the subject of numerous public discussions and criticisms for decades due to its tabloid style. The publisher's long-term plans include discontinuing the printed newspaper and transitioning to a fully digital offering. Its overall digital offering is the most visited news site in Germany.
Bild is published by Axel Springer, one of the largest media houses in Europe. In addition to Bild and Bild am Sonntag, Axel Springer also publishes Welt and Welt am Sonntag as well as the TV channel Welt, Business Insider, Politico and the US newsletter Morning Brew. Axel Springer holds a stake in The Pioneer and owns the job portal Stepstone and the AVIV Group with the real estate portal Immoscout. The publishing house also owns Bonial, Idealo and Awin.

Key Facts

Audience Share17.17%
Ownership TypePrivate
Geographic CoverageNational
Content TypePaid
Active Transparency
company/channel informs proactively and comprehensively about its ownership, data is constantly updated and easily verifiable

Ownership

Ownership Structure48.5% of Axel Springer is owned by the investment company Traviata B.V., which is owned 73.4% by KKR and 26.6% by the Canadian pension fund CPPIB. This puts KKR's stake in Axel Springer at 35.6% and CPPIB's at 12.9%.
37.5% is owned by Axel Springer Gesellschaft für Publizistik GmbH & Co. KG, 60% of which is owned by Friede Springer and 40% by CEO Dr Mathias Döpfner. 5.0% is held by Axel Sven Springer and 1% by Ariane Melanie Springer. A further 6.9% is held by Dr Mathias Döpfner via MD Beteiligungsgesellschaft mbH (4.1%) and Brilliant 310. GmbH (0.9%) and directly (1.9%). The remaining 1% is held by the Friede Springer Foundation.
This results in an allocation of Axel Springer's shares to 35.6% KKR, 23.5% Friede Springer and Friede Springer Foundation, 21.0% Dr Mathias Döpfner, 12.9% CPPIB, 5% Axel Sven Springer and 1% Ariane Melanie Springer.
Voting RightsIn September 2020, Friede Springer announced that she was donating significant shares in the company to CEO Dr Mathias Döpfner and also transferring the voting rights for her remaining shares to him. This means that Dr Mathias Döpfner can vote 44.4% (excluding Friede Springer Stiftung). The remaining voting rights are likely to correspond to the actual shares in the company: 48.5% KKR and CPPIB, 5% Axel Sven Springer, 1% Ariane Melanie Springer, 1% Friede Springer Foundation, represented by the Executive Board Dr Friede Springer and Karin Arnold.
Individual Owner
Group / Individual Owner
  • CPPIB

    CPPIB (Canadian Pension Plan Investment Board) is a pension fund that manages and invests the pension contributions of Canadian contributors. In Europe, CPPIB invests around 96 billion Canadian dollars, primarily in the areas of real estate, infrastructure, public equities, property funds and direct investments. CPPIB is a shareholder in the holding company Traviata, which owns 48.5% of Axel Springer SE. This means that 12.9% of Axel Springer belongs to CPPIB.
    12.9
  • KKR

    KKR is a major shareholder (35.6%) of Axel Springer SE and an American investment company that holds investments in various business areas. In addition to the media sector, these include fin-tech companies, property companies, medical and other healthcare companies and energy companies. KKR is one of the largest investors in fossil fuels.
    35.6

Media Companies / Groups

Facts

Founding Year1952
Founder
  • Axel Caesar Springer
    returned to his father's newspaper Altonaer Nachrichten after an apprenticeship as a typesetter and printer in his father Hinrich Springer's company and a traineeship at the news agency Wolffs Telegraphisches Bureau and the Bergedorfer Zeitung. The rise of his empire began in 1946 with the founding of Hör Zu! and in 1952 he conceived his media recipe for success: the first edition of the tabloid Bild. The Bild newspaper still shapes the opinions of millions of readers today and is the newspaper with the highest circulation in Europe. Springer died on September 22, 1985 in West Berlin. Today, the company he founded, Axel Springer, is one of the largest media groups in Europe.
CEO
  • Claudius Senst
    became CEO of the Bild and Welt Group at Axel Springer in 2021. He was previously COO of Insider Inc, a subsidiary of Axel Springer in the USA, which publishes Business Insider, among others. He is still a member of the Board of Directors at Insider. He joined Axel Springer in 2013 as a Junior Executive and Board Advisor. Prior to that, he was a consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. In 2016, he moved to the USA to help manage Axel Springer's investment portfolio there. In fall 2017, he joined Insider Inc. as Head of Subscriptions, where he became COO in 2020.
  • Christoph Eck-Schmidt
    CEO of Bonial and since the beginning of 2023 also the Co-Managing Director of Bild and Media Impact. He began his career as a trainee at Axel Springer and later worked at Media Impact. After a brief stint at ImmoScout24, he returned to Axel Springer in 2019 as Managing Director of Bonial. Together with Claudius Senst and Julia Wehrle (Managing Director of Media Impact), Eck-Schmidt is responsible for the regional and national marketing of Bild and Media Impact.
  • Carolin Hulshoff-Pol
    CEO of the Welt Group and Managing Director of Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH, which publishes Bild as well as Welt.
Editor-In-Chief
  • Marion Horn
    began her career with a traineeship at W&W-Verlag in Hamburg and then worked as a freelance journalist. From 1989, she was head of the service department at Bild der Frau (then Axel-Springer-Verlag, now Funke Mediengruppe) and in 1992, as Germany's youngest editor-in-chief at the time, she was put in charge of the erotic magazine Das neue Wochenend at Bauer publishing house. In 1998, Horn followed today's Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner to the editor-in-chief's chair at the Hamburger Morgenpost (then Gruner + Jahr). In 2000, she returned to the Axel Springer publishing house and became a member of the Bild editorial team in January 2001. From October 2013 to November 2019, she was editor-in-chief of Bild am Sonntag. Since March 16, 2023, she has been Chair of the Editorial Board of the Bild Group.
  • Robert Schneider
    began his career at Bild-Zeitung in Leipzig and, after a traineeship in Cologne, worked in various newspaper editorial offices at Axel Springer Verlag. In 1999, at the age of 23, he became head of department and later deputy editor-in-chief of the Berlin tabloid B.Z. and the weekly Bild am Sonntag. In April 2011, he took over the position of Editor-in-Chief of the magazine Superillu (Burda). From March 2016 to April 2023, he was Editor-in-Chief of the news magazine Focus (Burda). Since April 17, 2023, he has been Editor-in-Chief of Bild-Zeitung alongside Marion Horn.
ContactAxel Springer Deutschland GmbH
Axel-Springer-Straße 65
10888 Berlin
Germany
RevenueMissing Data
Operating ProfitMissing Data
Advertising (in % of total funding)Missing Data
Market ShareMissing Data
Headlines
Meta DataAudience share according to agma/ma press media
The average exchange rate from the year of publication of the source was used for the conversions from euros to US dollars (2020: EUR 1 = USD 1.09556).
Specific financial information relating exclusively to this media outlet is not available. This data is included in the consolidated financial statements of Axel Springer SE.
Sources
Documents (PDF)
  • Satzung
    File
  • Liste der Gesellschafte der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH
    File
  • BILD GmbH: Jahresabschluss zum Geschäftsjahr vom 01.01.2020 bis zum 31.12.2020
    File