Mathias Doepfner

Net worth over time

Biography

• Mathias Doepfner is chairman and CEO of German media giant Axel Springer, which is active in over 40 countries and employs more than 16,000 people.
• Axel Springer hired him in 1988 as Editor-in-Chief of its newspaper Die Welt. He joined the company's executive board in 2000 and became CEO in 2002.
• His success in building revenue from digital activities, from under $150 million to around $3 billion, helped earn the trust of controlling shareholder Friede Springer.
• To ensure continuity, in 2020 Friede Springer gave him a 15% stake in Axel Springer and sold him an additional 4.1%. He was awarded additional stock and now owns nearly 22%.
• Axel Springer went public in 1985. In 2020, it went private again in a KKR-funded buyout that valued the company at around $8 billion.
• Acquisitions under Doepfner have included TV news station N24 (since rebranded as Welt) and the digital news outlet Business Insider.
• Doepfner studied musicology and theatrical arts in Frankfurt and Boston before starting his career as a journalist at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung in 1982.