Bastei Lübbe AG expands management team: Ulrich Zimmermann appointed as new CFO

Bastei Lübbe AG expands management team:
Ulrich Zimmermann appointed as new CFO

Cologne, 19 June 2017 - Bastei Lübbe AG, which is listed in the Prime Standard of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, is expanding its management team: Ulrich Zimmermann has been appointed as a new member of the company's Management Board with effect from today. This was unanimously resolved by the company's Supervisory Board on Wednesday, 14 June 2017. Zimmermann will be responsible for Finance and join the current management team headed by Thomas Schierack (CEO), who is in charge of Legal, HR, Digital and IT, and Klaus Kluge, who is in charge of Programme, Sales, Marketing and Press.

Ulrich Zimmermann has many years of experience as the CFO of a listed medium-sized company, bringing along extensive and valuable expertise in the management of holding companies. The business engineer, who was born in Hanover in 1962, previously held a management position at Hawesko Holding AG for 18 years. He was also responsible for the company's Finance department as a member of the Management Board from 2007 until his departure in July 2016. Prior to this, he also held management roles at major companies, including Citizen Watch Europe GmbH and Deutsche Lufthansa AG.

By expanding the management team, Bastei Lübbe AG is taking into account the significantly broader range of tasks involved: "We have seen strong organic and inorganic growth in recent years, partly thanks to acquisitions such as BuchPartner GmbH. As a result, the range of tasks and challenges has also grown significantly, and this applies to the Management Board, too. This is being taken into account with the expansion of the team," explained Robert Stein, Chairman of the Supervisory Board.

CEO Thomas Schierack is looking forward to working together with him: "With Ulrich Zimmermann, we are welcoming a highly renowned CFO as our new colleague. I am confident that we will be able to implement our strategic growth plans even more efficiently with our expanded management team."​

About Bastei Lübbe AG:
Bastei Lübbe AG is an internationally active media group with headquarters in Cologne. Its business activities primarily focus on the development and licencing of contents which are sold worldwide in physical and digital formats. The core business of the company in the book segment covers classic publishing and periodically published puzzle magazines and novels. With its total of twelve publishing houses and imprints, the company group currently offers around 3,600 titles in the areas of fiction, non-fiction as well as books for children and young adults. In the growing segment of hardcover fiction books, the company has been the market leader in Germany for many years. At the same time, Bastei Lübbe is an engine for innovation in the area of digital media. Apart from the production of thousands of audio and ebooks, the "digital" business unit also maintains participations in the self-publishing platform "BookRix" and the renowned game publisher "Daedalic Entertainment". The digital value-added chain of Bastei Lübbe AG is rounded off through its participation in the online shop "beam-ebooks.de" as well as the new and unique international entertainment platform "oolipo". Since January 2016, the participations in Daedalic Entertainment, BookRix, oolipo, Beam Shop, JV USA and Bastei Media have been bundled in Bastei Ventures GmbH.

With annual sales of nearly 104.9 million euros (financial year 2015/2016), Bastei Lübbe AG is the largest medium-sized family-run publishing business in Germany. The shares of the company have been listed in the Prime Standard segment on the Frankfurt stock exchange (WKN A1X3YY, ISIN DE000A1X3YY0) since 2013. Further information is available at www.luebbe.de.

Contact Bastei Lübbe AG:
Barbara Fischer
Head of Press and Public Relations
Phone: +49(0)221 / 82 00 28 50
Email: barbara.fischer@luebbe.de