Jury Rules Bertelsmann To Pay Former Execs

A Californian jury has ruled that Bertelsmann owes two former executives at least €200 million euros ($244.3 million) for their contribution to the German media giant's European joint venture with America Online. The former Bertelsmann executives, Jan Henric Büttner and Andreas von Blottnitz, both Germans, helped set up the deal and claimed Thomas Middelhoff, who was then a senior Bertelsmann executive in charge of multimedia and corporate development, promised them an equity stake in the company, now a unit of Time Warner.