SCHMIDT-HOLTZ TO TAKE TEVEO POST

The music exec will become a partner of the Hamburg-based pay-platform TeVeo on April 1, with a share that is reportedly 10%.

Schmidt-Holtz made the announcement from Hamburg yesterday: "TeVeo has realized the signs of time and plays a key role in the hybrid-TV-technology. I see enormous growth for TeVeo's pay-platform TV-ID, not only in Germany, but for the whole European market."

With TV-ID, owners of hybrid TV sets can access Internet content directly onto their screens, and also can buy products and services, much like stateside initiatives from Apple and Google. Experts predict, in five years, two third of all households with TV will use them for Internet access.

Schmidt-Holtz recently became a shareholder of the Hamburg-based startup company Hanse Venture and was appointed to the foundation of the German media company Bertelsmann, of which he was on the board for years.

It has been rumored now for months that Schmidt-Holtz would leave SME when his deal expired at the end of March, to be replaced by UMG Chairman Doug Morris. Vivendi has still not said it will let Morris out of his deal, which runs through the end of the year.

Schmidt-Holtz became chairman of the board of the Bertelsmann Music Group in January 2001. With the merger of BMG and Sony in 2003, he first became Chairman and, from 2006 on, CEO of Sony BMG. Since the sale of the Bertelsmann shares to Sony in 2008 he was CEO of Sony Music Entertainment.