Translated material
Kirch went bankrupt
The German media concert Kirch Holding GmbH, whose debts reached $ 5.7 billion, announced the bankruptcy of the Kirch-Media key company, Bloomberg reports. Negotiations by the owner of the company Leo Kirkh regarding the purchase of his business with Rupert Murdok and Silvio Berlusconi did not end anything . Lenders are tired of advancement in negotiations of three eternal competitors, and, as the agency reports, most likely the business will be sold "from the hammer" for debts.
Information about the colossal debt KircH Gruppe has already shook the positions of large German banks HVB Group, Commerzbank, Bayerische Landesbank Girozentrale and Lehman Brothers, which will be controlled by Kirch-Media assets. Banks plan to change management and attract investors, one of which may be the largest publishing concern of the AXEL Springer Germany.
Media-imperia, founded by Leo Kirch, dominated the German market for 40 years. Kirh founded his company in 1959, having bought the rights to show the movie Federico Fellini "Road", which he then resold German television. Now she owns the rights to broadcast Formula 1 and football matches of the 2002 and 2006 world and 2006 championships, as well as the largest movie library outside the United States.
“This is the end of the whole era,” says the professor of the School of Arts in Cologne Dietrich Leder. “Kirkh was a core figure in post -war Germany, he participated in the formation of the German media historia.”
The financial difficulties of Kirkh began after the German banks that were faced with the growth of non-returned loans against the background of mass bankruptcy, demanded from the Kirch the payment of loans that Kirch scored in the early 90s, when the industry was on the rise.
After that, negotiations with potential investors began for more than a month. On Friday, banks were unable to persuade investors to help in the allocation of an emergency loan with a volume of 150 million euros for Kirch-Media, and the bankruptcy of the company has become a matter of the next few days.