Wolf Bauer

Born in Stuttgart in 1950, Wolf Bauer studied Journalism and History of Art at the universities of Munich and Berlin. He initially began working from 1976 as a political features writer for the ZDF programme "Kennzeichen D". In 1980, Wolf Bauer came to UFA Film- und Fernsehproduktion as an editor and producer and has served as executive producer for UFA Film & TV Produktion since 1991. From 1991 to 2015 he was CEO of the UFA Group and from 2015 to 2017 Co-CEO. Since the founding of FremantleMedia in 2000, he has also sat on the board of this globally active production company. FremantleMedia is the international production arm of the RTL Group which also includes UFA. Under his leadership, UFA has developed into a highly efficient production group with eight subsidiaries which have continuously expanded their leading market position as creator of content in Germany in recent years. The Group has been able to increase its turnover by more than 30 times between 1991 and the present day. As head of UFA, Wolf Bauer founded Grundy UFA in 1991 with Reg Grundy, the Australian game show and daily drama pioneer. Together with Mike Murphy, the two turned it into Europe's largest producer of daily dramas GrundyUFA. With "Gute Zeiten * Schlechte Zeiten", he introduced the "daily drama" to Germany in 1992, and followed this in 2004 with the telenovela "Bianca - Path to Happiness". In 1998, he joined forces with Prof. Nico Hofmann and Ariane Krampe to set up teamWorx, today Germany's leading producer of quality TV movies and fiction programmes with event character. The UFA Group's portfolio expanded in 2000 to include entertainment formats after a merger of the UFA's parent holding with Pearson TV and the subsequent founding of the RTL Group. To cover the production of this genre, GRUNDY Light Entertainemt was found. In 2002, Wolf Bauer further expanded the Group by acquiring a majority interest in Phoenix Film. In early 2008, he founded UFA Cinema with Thomas Peter Friedl, Prof. Nico Hofmann and Dr. Jürgen Schuster and serves as CEO and producer. Given the fundamental changes in the media landscape brought about by digitalization, Wolf Bauer has transformed the UFA from a straightforward television producer into a content creator which offers creative solutions for a multimedia exploitation of content. This is not only for all of the major channels in Germany but also for the broadest range of new partners. His goal is to establish a 21st century entertainment company whose focus is on self-created intellectual property to be exploited via all possible channels. The founding of UFA brand communication, the group's 8th label, and of UFA Lab, a content developing laboratory for new media platforms, are due to this transformation process. Since 2001 Wolf Bauer has been a member of the Advisory Board East for the Deutsche Bank. Together with other producers of the lobby group film20, he successfully pushed for the creation of a central representation for German producers. As a result of these endeavors, the German Producers Alliance (Allianz Deutscher Produzenten) was founded in March 2008, with Bauer a member of the joint board until April 2012. He has also been a member of the Bertelsmann Foundation's board of trustees since 2008.