Georg Kofler, the flamboyant chief executive of German pay-TV company Premiere AG, will leave at his own request by the end of August and be replaced by Chief Financial Officer Michael Boernicke.
In a surprise statement on Monday, Premiere said Kofler was leaving the company he rebuilt out of the ruins of Leo Kirch's media empire to pursue interests outside the media sector after renegotiating Premiere's rights to broadcast Bundesliga soccer.
Deputy CFO Alexander Teschner will become CFO. Premiere shares fell 3.1 percent to 18.03 euros by 1244 GMT, underperforming a 2.4 percent rebound in the German mid-cap index. Kofler sold all his remaining shares, representing 1.25 percent of the company, through the market last week for around 18.50 each, valuing his stake at 22.7 million euros ($31.1 million).
Kofler said the time was right to hand over control of the company, which will soon be bidding for a new batch of soccer rights that will run until 2012. He said he was not willing to stay on to see the firm's strategy through such a long period.
"I intend, as a leading business person, to build up a group of companies that is positioned in selected growth markets, however not in the media sector," he said in a statement.
He later told Reuters in an interview: "You will see something concrete in the first half of 2008. I will do it on my own and start from nothing." Kofler has overseen many twists of fortune at Premiere, Germany's only pay-TV satellite broadcaster, whose success has largely depended on its ability to show live games of Bundesliga soccer, Germany's most popular sport.
In his latest Houdini act, he rescued Premiere from seemingly inevitable disaster after the company lost the Bundesliga rights at auction by cutting a sublicensing deal with new rights holder arena, a unit of cable TV firm Unity Media.
"Of course it's a big surprise. Kofler was really the best CEO you could have wished for Premiere. Boernicke isn't Kofler. I don't think there is another Kofler in Germany," said Sal. Oppenheim telecoms and media analyst Sonia Rabussier.
"But Boernicke has also been very involved in the CEO's business and has worked very closely with Kofler. He's very competent. It's not as though the company will lack leadership. He has all the keys in his hand to make the company successful."
Kofler told Reuters on Monday that subscriber numbers were rising but declined to give any specific numbers. Gepa Tiemann, communications and media analyst at WestLB said she did not believe the departure of Kofler from Premiere, often seen as a take-over target, signalled an imminent sale of the company.
"I don't see that Kofler's departure makes Premiere more of a take-over target than it already was after winning the sublicensing deal with arena," she said. "I'd see Kofler's sale of his shares as a sign the company won't be taken over in the short term."
Kofler told Reuters there were no concrete talks with any potential buyers and that Franklin Mutual Advisers, which said on Monday it had raised its stake in Premiere to over 5 percent, was a normal institutional investor. "As far as I know they have no further ambitions," he said.
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