Bavaria and Telepool merge foreign sales units

German sales and distribution outfits Bavaria Film International and Telepool are to merge their foreign sales operations from January 2012 to become Global Screen.

The new company will hande worldwide sales of feature and television programmes outside German-speaking European territories.

Bavaria Film MD Rolf Moser and Telepool MD Thomas Weymar will be company MDs, with Moser primarily handling commercial affairs and Weymar responsible for programme distribution. Both will handle acquisitions. Thorsten Ritter will be head of film sales at the new company.

Global Screen will be headquartered in Munich, Germany, with a staff of approximately 40 and an authorized capital of €3m.

Weymar said of the merger: “With this distribution team and our professional network we will become big enough to stand our ground in the highly competitive programme market, and still remain small enough to individually take care of our clients.”

Matthias Esche, MD Bavaria Film Group, said: “This joint venture on equal terms will strengthen our international market position. In this way, a wide range of programmes from various sources can be bundled and distributed in an effective manner.”

The existing libraries and programme licences will remain with the shareholders and will be marketed internationally by Global Screen. The two shareholders are Bavaria Media, a one hundred percent subsidiary of Bavaria Film, and Telepool.