Interview with IESE Alumnus Philip Alberdingk Thijm (MBA ‘89)

The Business of Making News

Running a successful media business today requires living in a multimedia environment, where readers readily move back and forth between online and print. Philip Alberdingk Thijm describes how he transformed Het Financieele Dagblad into a multimedia financial news source for The Netherlands.

They say “life begins at 40,” but as the newly appointed, youngest ever CEO of Het Financieele Dagblad, Philip Alberdingk Thijm (MBA ‘89) could have thought that life just got tough at 40. When he joined the company in September 2002, the Dutch financial newspaper was in bad shape. One of the first things he had to do was to downsize the staff by 25 percent. Since 20 percent of those he had to lay off also held shares in the company, he knew there was no way he could take a cavalier or heavyhanded approach. He had to sit down with them face to face and convince them. And since the staff was made of the top financial journalists in the country, Alberdingk Thijm knew he had better be very convincing.


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