title of a book presented on August 20th by Thomas Middelhoff, the former boss of Bertelsmann, a media conglomerate, once feted from Berlin to Hollywood. It is not an admission of legal guilt, for Mr Middelhoff still feels his three-year prison sentence for tax evasion and breach of trust was overly harsh. But he committed the seven deadly sins in a biblical sense, he says, which is why he feels he deserved time behind bars and the loss of his fortune, reputation, health and marriage.
His reward—a bonus of €45m—was the start of the undoing of his personal finances. Greed, he says, led him to invest in dodgy real-estate funds and tax-avoidance schemes. In 2002 he was forced out of Bertelsmann after clashing with the Mohn family, who own the company, over his plans to take the firm public. Eager for a second act as a German business tycoon, in 2005 he took the helm of KarstadtQuelle, which later became Arcandor, then Germany’s biggest retailer.
alllibertynews He is very honest in this book, he was always a competitive person but not greedy, that happened as he says after comparing his salary to others... then it just got out of hand. Very interesting self observation.
He followed the path of the American New Economy, which has nothing to do with german corporate culture .