"At Agefi, the goal has been reached".
Dominique Hiltbrunner, a 34-year-old publisher, quickly got the French-Swiss business newspaper Agefi back on track. And almost as an afterthought, he bought five magazines and is turning them around as well. Markus Knöpfli spoke with the Basel-Landschaft-based jack-of-all-trades.
Dominique Hiltbrunner: That is difficult. With dynamic, sometimes a little choleric, clear and direct, visionary, quality and cost-conscious ...
... and with little seat leather?
That's right. In Lausanne, I'm responsible for the two companies Agefi and Media City. In Berne I have Automobil Revue and Schweizer Bauer, in Basel Spatz and in Zurich Women in Business and Blickpunkt: KMU. With these four locations, the train is my office.
I meant rather that you don't stay in one place for long. Take Agefi, for example: you joined there a year ago as a director and member of the Board of Directors, but now you've already taken your director's hat off again. Why is that?
I was brought in to restructure, Agefi had been doing relatively badly for two or three years with an almost 18 percent loss in turnover. I spent three months analyzing the situation and started to restructure the company in February 2011. From then on, I took over as director. The reorganization took about ten months, and in 2011 we were able to close the year with a profit of 50,000 francs again, with a turnover of 7 million francs. So the goal had been achieved. I created new structures and installed Martin Schädel as Director ad inter im. Now it is enough for me to review the processes as an active member of the Board of Directors.
> To the full interview from the current print edition of Werbewoche.
