The 33-year-old scion of one of Europe’s most powerful media families is set to take over the helm of music label BMG as parent company Bertelsmann grooms its next generation of leaders.
Thomas Coesfeld will succeed outgoing chief executive Hartwig Masuch in July, who has chaired the music group since 2008 and made it one of the most successful offshoots of the German publishing group, which also owns Penguin Random House and Broadcast Group RTL.
Coesfeld and his brother Carsten, who was named CEO of Bertelsmann last year, are the seventh generation of the family that founded the company in 1835.
BMG, a European rival to U.S. music conglomerates such as Universal, Warner and Sony, said the appointment would facilitate a long-planned leadership change at the division, originally scheduled for January.
It added that Masucci, 69, had requested an early departure citing personal plans for the future, but would remain in touch with Bertelsmann in an advisory capacity until 2026.
Thomas Rabe, Bertelsmann’s chief executive, described him as “a great music entrepreneur” who had built a new kind of music company.
Masuch said he “leaves with a high profile – confident that a new generation under Thomas Coesfeld and his management team will successfully lead the music company into a new era”.
Bertelsmann sold its old music publishing business to Universal Music for 1.63 billion euros in 2006, starting from scratch two years later under Masucci.
Since then it has grown into one of the most prosperous offshoots of the Bertelsmann group – which had revenues of more than 20 billion euros last year – as it pursues acquisitions of music labels and catalogs with the backing of US private equity firms. The aggressive strategy of KKR.
The Berlin-based music group counts artists including Rita Ora and Kylie Minogue and represents Mick Jagger and Roger Voight Past recordings, including Roger Waters, saw their fastest growth in history last year, with revenue up 31 percent to 866 million euros. Operating profit before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization was 195 million euros.
Coesfeld, a former McKinsey consultant, joined the family business in 2016. He became BMG’s deputy chief financial officer in 2020 and chief financial officer the following year.
His most immediate goal is probably to maintain the pace of growth and achieve the goal of 1 billion euros in annual revenue.
Alice Enders, a music industry expert at consultancy Enders Analysis, said Masucci is a music industry legend whose “shoes can be difficult to fill”. But she said that as a former chief financial officer, Coesfeld “knows a lot” about the business. She described him as a “good choice” to continue “sound financial management” at BMG.
Inside Bertelsmann, Cosfield and his brother are widely seen as poised to take over the leadership of the family’s media empire from Rabe, who has been chief executive since 2002. His contract expires in 2026.
The siblings are the grandsons of the late Reinhard Mohn, who turned a provincial printing house that started out publishing Bibles into a global media player. Mohn’s son Christophe, a child of his second marriage, is chairman of Bertelsmann’s supervisory board. The Coesfeld brothers are the grandchildren of Reinhard Mohn’s first love.