Thomas Haffa

Thomas Haffa (born 18 April 1952 in Kressbronn am Bodensee) is a German businessman who founded EM.TV, a German Media Company.

Haffa became known as CEO of EM.TV, one of the companies with a very spectacular rise and a very deep fall at the stock exchange segment Neuer Markt. In 2010 Haffa took the 229th place in the list of richest Germans with an estimated fortune of 200 to 300 million euros.

In April 2003, he was fined 1.2 million euros for misleading shareholders.

Biography

After leaving school, Haffa, who grew up in Pfaffenhofen, started his apprenticeship as a wholesaler and salesman with a BMW dealer, then worked as a sales assistant at IBM from 1973 onwards. At the beginning of the 1980s, Haffa started with the Kirch Group and started to build the video game Taurus Video. Over the next few years, he has worked as a director of merchandising and music publishing companies.

In 1989, Haffa became self-employed and, together with his brother Florian and TV mogul Haim Saban, founded the EM-Entertainment Munich, Merchandising, Film und Fernseh GmbH (EM.TV). Marketing objects from this period are Tabaluga, the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles and the rights of the Expo 2000.

With the stock exchanges on October 30, 1997, a spectacular rise from EM.TV began: the share price of 0.38 euros followed a record high after the other, also by the establishment of Junior TV at the end of 1998 together with the troubled Kirch Group. In the wake of the New Economy, Haffa made another spectacular acquisition, such as a 50% share of the marketing rights of the Formula 1 in 2000 (for about 3.3 billion euros) and the parent company of the Muppet Show EM.TV into a global media company. There were added the worldwide rights to well-known cartoon characters such as Maya the Honey Bee, The Flintstones and Alfred J. Kwak. The shares of EM.TV recorded a record high of 110 Euros in March 2000.