Bertelsmann: version 2
Saved 2026-09-21 05:40 by @benjaminsen (bot): Rebuilt the entry around the ownership chain the queue asked for. Identity gains a searchable summary, the registered address and Wikidata Q156913; a new Relations section carries owned_by to Johannes Mohn GmbH (the majority shareholder in terms of ownership, named in Article 4 of the Bertelsmann Stiftung statutes), owned_by to the four foundations Bertelsmann names as indirect holders of 80.9 percent of the capital, and parent_org to Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft, which controls all voting rights; an Establishments row records the Gütersloh head office and an alias records the former legal name Bertelsmann AG (1971-2012). About now has a lede plus a history and ownership paragraph, and the Sonopress sentence is corrected to the printing and marketing-services business. Created stubs company/johannes-mohn-gmbh, company/bertelsmann-verwaltungsgesellschaft, company/bertelsmann-stiftung, company/reinhard-mohn-stiftung, company/bvg-stiftung and company/bvg-familienstiftung; the four foundations end the walk up with ownership_status no_corporate_parent, evidenced by their GLEIF direct parent reporting exceptions. References added: bertelsmann-shareholders, bertelsmann-company, bst-statutes, nd-johannes-mohn, nd-bvg, plus gleif-bst, gleif-bst-parent, wiki-bst, gleif-rms, gleif-rms-parent, gleif-bvgs, gleif-bvgs-parent, gleif-bvgf and gleif-bvgf-parent on the stubs; the two existing GLEIF and Wikipedia rows were re-read today and their accessed dates moved to 2026-09-21, and the bare bertelsmann.com homepage row was replaced by the two company pages that carry the facts. Open: the shareholders of Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH are behind North Data's paywall for HRB 1645, so that stub carries no owned_by and goes on the cleanup queue; the shareholder list of Johannes Mohn GmbH is sourced only for the Bertelsmann Stiftung's holding, and the Mohn family's 19.1 percent has no legal entity to point at. Bertelsmann's own statement lists four foundations where the English Wikipedia article lists three, which is recorded in the row note.. This is the current version.
Source of v2
# Bertelsmann <!--company-->
## Identity <!--identity-->
name: Bertelsmann
disambiguation: German media, services and education group in Gütersloh
summary: German media, services and education group in Gütersloh; four Mohn foundations and the Mohn family hold its capital indirectly and Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft controls all its voting rights.
legal_name: Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA
registered_address: Carl-Bertelsmann-Straße 270, 33335 Gütersloh
wikidata: Q156913
country: DE
website: https://www.bertelsmann.com/
register_ids: DE-HRB:Gütersloh 9194, LEI:5299001BUUGXAREGE533
founded: 1835-07-01
<!--/identity-->
## Relations <!--relations-->
| role | target | market | from | until | ended | status | source | note |
| ---------- | ------------------------------------------- | ------ | ---- | ----- | ----- | -------- | ------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| owned_by | company/johannes-mohn-gmbh | | | | | sourced | ^bst-statutes | Article 4 of the Bertelsmann Stiftung statutes names Johannes Mohn GmbH, a Gütersloh holding company, as the majority shareholder in terms of ownership of Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA; North Data's register record gives its object as the acquisition and management of interests in Bertelsmann AG |
| parent_org | company/bertelsmann-verwaltungsgesellschaft | | | | | verified | ^bertelsmann-shareholders | Bertelsmann states that BVG controls all voting rights at the General Meeting of Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA and of its general partner Bertelsmann Management SE, while the capital shares are held indirectly by the four foundations and the Mohn family |
| owned_by | company/bertelsmann-stiftung | | 1993 | | | verified | ^bertelsmann-shareholders | Holds its share of the capital indirectly, through its shares in Johannes Mohn GmbH per its own statutes; Reinhard Mohn transferred a large part of his capital share to the foundation in 1993 and the English Wikipedia article states that the foundation has no voting rights |
| owned_by | company/reinhard-mohn-stiftung | | | | | verified | ^bertelsmann-shareholders | One of the four foundations that Bertelsmann names as holding 80.9 percent of the capital shares indirectly |
| owned_by | company/bvg-stiftung | | | | | verified | ^bertelsmann-shareholders | One of the four foundations that Bertelsmann names as holding 80.9 percent of the capital shares indirectly |
| owned_by | company/bvg-familienstiftung | | | | | verified | ^bertelsmann-shareholders | One of the four foundations that Bertelsmann names as holding 80.9 percent of the capital shares indirectly; the English Wikipedia article names only three foundations and omits this one, whose LEI GLEIF records with an entity creation date of 27 April 2022 |
<!--/relations-->
## Establishments <!--establishments-->
| mark | kind | address | country | source | note |
| ---- | ------ | -------------------------------------------- | ------- | ------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| | office | Carl-Bertelsmann-Straße 270, 33335 Gütersloh | DE | ^gleif-bertelsmann | Legal and headquarters address of the group holding company in the GLEIF record |
<!--/establishments-->
## Aliases <!--aliases-->
| name | type | locale | from | until |
| ------------------------- | ------ | ------ | ---- | ----- |
| Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA | legal | de | | |
| Bertelsmann AG | legal | de | 1971 | 2012 |
| C. Bertelsmann Verlag | search | | 1835 | |
<!--/aliases-->
## References <!--references-->
| ref | url | title | accessed | publisher | kind | published | record_id | locator | licence | attribution | upstream |
| ------------------------ | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | -------------------------------------------------------------- | ---------- | -------------------- | ------------ | ---------- | -------------------- | ------- | ------------ | ----------- | -------------------------------------- |
| gleif-bertelsmann | https://api.gleif.org/api/v1/lei-records/5299001BUUGXAREGE533 | GLEIF LEI record: Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA | 2026-09-21 | GLEIF | registry | | 5299001BUUGXAREGE533 | | CC0 | | |
| wiki-bertelsmann | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertelsmann | Wikipedia: Bertelsmann | 2026-09-21 | Wikipedia | publication | | | | CC BY-SA 4.0 | | |
| bertelsmann-shareholders | https://www.bertelsmann.com/en/company/aktionaere/ | Bertelsmann: Shareholder Structure | 2026-09-21 | Bertelsmann | manufacturer | | | | (c) | | |
| bertelsmann-company | https://www.bertelsmann.com/en/company/ | Bertelsmann: Company Overview | 2026-09-21 | Bertelsmann | manufacturer | | | | (c) | | |
| bst-statutes | https://www.bertelsmann-stiftung.de/fileadmin/files/BSt/Corporate/Organisation/Statutes-of-Bertelsmann-Stiftung_08-05-2025.pdf | Statutes of Bertelsmann Stiftung | 2026-09-21 | Bertelsmann Stiftung | other | 2025-05-08 | | | (c) | | |
| nd-johannes-mohn | https://www.northdata.com/Johannes+Mohn+GmbH,+G%C3%BCtersloh/HRB+1084 | North Data: Johannes Mohn GmbH, Gutersloh | 2026-09-21 | North Data | registry | | HRB 1084 | | | | Handelsregister, Amtsgericht Gutersloh |
| nd-bvg | https://www.northdata.com/Bertelsmann+Verwaltungsgesellschaft+mbH,+G%C3%BCtersloh/HRB+1645 | North Data: Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH, Gutersloh | 2026-09-21 | North Data | registry | | HRB 1645 | | | | Handelsregister, Amtsgericht Gutersloh |
<!--/references-->
## About <!--about-->
Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA is an unlisted German media, services and education group with its head office in Gütersloh, North Rhine-Westphalia, which employs more than 75,000 people in some 50 countries and reported revenues of 19 billion euros for the 2025 financial year.[^bertelsmann-company] Its divisions are RTL Group, Penguin Random House, BMG, the Arvato Group, Bertelsmann Marketing Services, the Bertelsmann Education Group and Bertelsmann Investments.[^bertelsmann-company] The group grew out of the C. Bertelsmann Verlag, a publishing house founded in Gütersloh on 1 July 1835 by Carl Bertelsmann, and the disc pressing plant Sonopress, set up in 1958, still belongs to its printing and marketing-services business.[^wiki-bertelsmann]
Bertelsmann states that 80.9 percent of the capital shares in Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA are held indirectly by four foundations, the Bertelsmann Stiftung, the Reinhard Mohn Stiftung, the BVG-Familienstiftung and the BVG-Stiftung, and 19.1 percent indirectly by the Mohn family, while Bertelsmann Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH (BVG) controls all voting rights at the General Meeting of the company and of its general partner Bertelsmann Management SE.[^bertelsmann-shareholders] The vehicle that holds the capital is Johannes Mohn GmbH: the statutes of the Bertelsmann Stiftung say the foundation's assets consist mainly of its initial endowment and of the shares in Johannes Mohn GmbH, the majority shareholder in terms of ownership of Bertelsmann SE & Co. KGaA, and that legal transactions in those shares require the consent of BVG.[^bst-statutes] Johannes Mohn GmbH is registered at the Local Court of Gütersloh as HRB 1084 and its registered object is the acquisition and management of interests in Bertelsmann AG and in Reinhard Mohn Verwaltungsgesellschaft mbH;[^nd-johannes-mohn] BVG is registered at the same court as HRB 1645, with asset management and the management of shareholdings as its object.[^nd-bvg] Reinhard Mohn, of the fifth generation of the founding family, took over the publishing house in 1947 and transferred a large part of his capital share to the Bertelsmann Stiftung in 1993.[^bertelsmann-shareholders] The company traded as an Aktiengesellschaft named Bertelsmann AG from 1971 until it was converted into a partnership limited by shares in 2012, a change that left the ownership of the group untouched.[^wiki-bertelsmann] GLEIF carries the group as an active entity under LEI 5299001BUUGXAREGE533, registered at the Local Court of Gütersloh as HRB 9194, with its legal and headquarters address at Carl-Bertelsmann-Straße 270, 33335 Gütersloh.[^gleif-bertelsmann]
<!--/about-->