Discontinuation of Financial Times Deutschland now official
It is now official: the Financial Times Deutschland FTD will be discontinued at the beginning of December. "December 7 will be our last edition," said Maike Rademaker, the works council member responsible, on Friday morning in Hamburg.
A short time later, the publishing group Gruner + Jahr (G+J) itself confirmed the definitive end of the German business magazine. G+J also announced on Friday that the traditional magazine Capital is to be continued from Berlin. The other two sister publications Impulse and Börse Online are being examined to see whether they can be sold or whether they can be continued through a management buy-out, i.e. a takeover by managers within the publishing house. If the talks do not come to a successful conclusion, G+J plans to discontinue these two business magazines as well. A total of 314 employees of the various publications are affected by the announced measures.
According to works council member Rademaker, an additional 50 jobs in non-editorial departments at G+J are at risk, for example in the computer department. Rademaker, the employee representative, has accused the management of the publishing house of failing to deal with the employees since the first rumors of a closure emerged: "We only found out about everything from the press," she said.
On Wednesday, the Board of Directors discussed the future of G+J Wirtschaftsblätter. The controllers authorized the Executive Board to "carry out a sale, partial closure or closure of G+J Wirtschaftsmedien", according to a spokesperson for the publishing house. However, according to the publisher, a sale of the newspaper did not materialize.
FTD employees wore salmon-colored mourning ribbons on their lapels on Friday. The second page of Friday's edition of the newspaper is filled with solidarity letters from readers. According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, Gruner + Jahr has budgeted around 40 million euros for severance payments. (SDA)
