welt.de

Logo of welt.de

The website of the newspaper Die Welt was launched in 1995 under the name Welt Online and offers an archive of all articles since May 1995, making welt.de one of the first online news sites in Germany. Since 2020, only subscribers have been able to comment on articles. In 2012, the website was renamed Die Welt and a payment system was introduced that initially allowed users to access 20 articles per month free of charge. After this limit, a subscription is required, and Die Welt now has a freemium model in which a subscription is required to read certain articles. The number of digital subscribers rose from more than 47,000 in June 2013 to 225,167 in April 2024. The digital newspaper "Welt Edition" was launched in September 2015. Since the merger of "Die Welt" and "N24" under the umbrella of "WeltN24", welt.de has developed into a joint news portal. Since July 2022, welt.de has been blocked in Russia, presumably due to its coverage of the war in Ukraine.

Key Facts

Audience Share0.01%
Ownership TypePrivate
Geographic CoverageNational
Content TypeMixed
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 Year1995
Founder
  • Welt Gruppe
    As early as 1995, the Welt Group's news portal was developed under the name Welt Online. The newspaper's website was thus one of the first online news offerings in Germany. At that time, the website offered an electronic newspaper archive of all articles since digitisation in May 1995.
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 other things. He is still a member of the Board of Directors there. 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 autumn 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 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, Christoph returned to Axel Springer in 2019 as Managing Director of Bonial. Together with Claudius Senst and Julia Wehrle (Managing Director of Media Impact), Christoph 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
  • Oliver Michalsky
    began his career in 1988 as an editor at the National-Zeitung/Berliner Allgemeine. Over the course of his career, he has held various positions at Welt and Berliner Morgenpost, including Head of Politics at Berliner Morgenpost and Managing Editor at Welt Kompakt. In 2017, he was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Welt Digital.
  • Ulf Poschardt
    studied journalism at the University of Munich and the German School of Journalism and philosophy at the Munich School of Philosophy. He received his doctorate from Humboldt University in Berlin in 1995. From 1996 to 2000, he was editor-in-chief of the Süddeutsche Zeitung magazine. From 2005 to 2008, he was the founding editor-in-chief of the German edition of Vanity Fair, which was first published in February 2007. Poschardt has published several books, including "DJ Culture" and "911", a book about the Porsche 911. He has been editor-in-chief of WeltN24 since 2016.
Other Important People
  • Stefan Aust
    began his journalistic career at the left-wing consumer magazine konkret. From 1994 to 2008, he was editor-in-chief of the news magazine Der Spiegel. Aust has been publisher of the daily newspaper Die Welt since 2014 and was also its editor-in-chief until September 2016. He has also been Editor-in-Chief of the WeltN24 Group since 1 January 2016. Aust has published numerous books on predominantly political topics, including the non-fiction book "Der Baader-Meinhof-Komplex".
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 DataMarket 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).
Sources
Documents (PDF)
  • Satzung
    File
  • Liste der Gesellschafte der Axel Springer Deutschland GmbH
    File