News Flash

Metro Group appoints Roland Weise as Vice Chairman

25 Jul '06

3 min read

Leopold Stiefel, Managing Partner and Chairman of the Board of Media-Saturn-Holding GmbH, Ingolstadt will resign from his management position at the end of this year. The current Vice Chairman, Roland Weise, will assume his position on the Board effective from 1 January 2007.

"The founders of Media Markt launched the company with a completely new concept and entrepreneurial courage. Today, 27 years later, the Media-Saturn Group is the European market leader in consumer electronics retailing. Without a doubt, Mr. Stiefel ranks among the most outstanding personalities in German industry", said Dr. Hans-Joachim Körber, CEO of the METRO Group. "Leopold Stiefel is one of the fathers of this extraordinary success story. He turned the concept of a large selling space electronics retailer into a box office hit across Europe."

Erich and Helga Kellerhals, Walter Gunz and Leopold Stiefel founded Media Markt in 1979. In 1988, Kaufhof Warenhaus AG acquired a stake in Media Markt. In 1990 and 1993 followed the takeover of Saturn.

Under Stiefel's management and with the implementation and internationalization of the two-brand strategy, the Media-Saturn Group soon rose to become the largest European electronics retailer. From 1995 to 2005 alone, sales soared fivefold from € 2.8 billion to € 13.3 billion, the number of stores rose from 142 to 558 and the company's workforce climbed from 8,275 to 37,230 on a full-time basis. Today, the company is active in twelve countries.

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