Technology >> CEO Interviews >> October 2, 2000
ALEXANDER FALK is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the
company Distefora Holdings AG, Glattbrugg/Zurich. He is also the
Chairman of the Board of Directors of ISION Internet AG, Hamburg, with
responsibility for the communications and acquisition strategy of the
company which he founded in 1998. Mr Falk comes from a distinguished
Hamburg-based business family. In 1945 his father founded the publishing
house Falk-Verlag. The company's city maps, with their patented folding
leaves, are famous throughout the world. With the dawn of the digital
age, it became clear that there would be no future of analogue
cartography. For this reason, in 1995 Mr Falk decided to sell the
profitable publishing company to Bertelsmann AG. The transaction was
completed in 1997. He retained ownership merely of the digital
cartography division as well as the family-owned property businesses.
The sale of the publishing house provided the foundation stone for a new
company with a strong future. Mr Falk's activities are now focused on
establishing a European technology holding company, specialising in
information and communications technology. He aims to achieve this by
bringing together his own as well as outside expertise, as well as by
means of company stakes and acquisitions. At the end of 1997 Mr Falk won
control over Distefora Holdings AG, becoming the principal shareholder
of this company which is listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange. In the wake
of this, he brought CIS GmbH, the digital cartography division of Valk-
Ferlag, into the Distefora Group. In 1999 he founded ISION Internet AG,
bringing all the Internet activities of Distefora Holding AG into the
new company. Mr Falk studied business management and politics in Hamburg
and Cape Town/South Africa between 1990 and 1994. Even as a student he
had seats on the boards of Falk-Verlag and the family-owned companies. Profile
profile of ISION Internet AG?
Mr. Falk: ISION is what we call a Website manager; that means we do not
only manage the network
