MediaMarkt's co-founder passed away

Erich Kellerhals, co-founder of electronics chain MediaMarkt, has died on Christmas day, aged 78. The German laid the foundation for one of the world’s largest electronics chains in 1979.

Started with furnaces and bikes

In 1963, Kellerhals opened a small store in Ingolstad, selling coal furnaces and oil ovens at first and adding bikes later on. In 1979, he and his business partners (Walter Gruntz and Leopold Stiefel) opened an electronics discount store in a Munich industrial area, considered the starting point of the current MediaMarkt empire.

Kaufhof acquired a majority in 1988, but Kellerhals stayed on as an important minority shareholder, even at a time when MediaMarkt acquired competitor Saturn (1993) and when it was acquired by METRO Group in 1996. Over the past few years, he often clashed with Media-Saturn’s board (first with Horst Norsberg, then with Dutch Pieter Haas) and with METRO CEO Olaf Koch, who had appointed Haas. This was said to have been one of the reasons for the company’s split into two companies, according to German business paper Manager Magazin. The electronics division was moved to a separate company, Ceconomy, earlier this year.

Kellerhals passed away among his family, aged 78, according to his trust fund manager. In Manager Magazin’s list of richest Germans, he and his wife were ranked 46th, estimated to be worth about three billion euro.