About Finance

Finance

Finance (FINANCE) is the German-language corporate-finance magazine for the country's CFO community, published six times a year by F.A.Z. Business Media of Frankfurt am Main. As the oldest media brand in the F.A.Z.-Gruppe's business-media portfolio, the magazine has spent more than two decades in close dialogue with CFOs, banks, and the financial community — covering corporate finance, M&A, private equity, treasury, and the financing of large and medium-sized companies, with the portal finance-magazin.de, the Finance-TV web format, the annual Structured FINANCE congress fair in Stuttgart, and the Finance Think Tank events completing the brand. It is the magazine where Germany's deal community reads about itself — and where the next generation of CFOs learns how the community works.

Overview

FINANCE appears six times a year plus special supplements, with the print edition's 21st volume reached in 2021 — placing the founding around 2001, the magazine now in its third decade. The annual subscription costs 44.50 euros; the single copy 8 euros — the pricing of a specialist B2B title whose readers expense it. The readership is the finance decision-makers of large and medium-sized companies: CFOs, treasurers, finance directors, and the banks, investors, lawyers, auditors, and advisors who serve them — the German "financial community," the network of people who finance, buy, sell, and advise the country's companies, from the DAX group's treasury to the Mittelstand's financing. The six-issues-a-year rhythm plus special supplements gives the magazine the space for the deep deal analysis and the people journalism — the CFO portraits, the financing structures explained, the market overviews — that the daily business press cannot provide.

The brand is cross-media: the print magazine, the online portal finance-magazin.de, the Finance-TV web-TV format, and the yearly Structured FINANCE congress fair in Stuttgart, the meeting place of the corporate-finance industry. The editorial team is described as maintaining the densest network and the most extensive experience with the CFO community in the German-speaking world — no other editorial team has a similarly dense network — with numerous journalist awards testifying to the quality, the proof of a specialist title's authority. Coverage spans private equity and M&A — the midmarket buyouts, the landmark deals like the LBBW financings and the Merck/Versum mega-deal that made CFO Kuhnert's name — corporate financing, treasury, and the capital markets topics that matter to the finance department's daily work: the negative-interest era and its consequences, the financing structures, the deal flow, the alternative financing providers challenging the house banks.

History

FINANCE emerged from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung's business-media activities as the F.A.Z.-Gruppe built specialist publications alongside the newspaper — the group's recognition that the finance community needed its own media, separate from the newspaper's general business coverage. The magazine became the flagship of F.A.Z. Business Media GmbH, the group's 100-percent subsidiary, and grew into the German-speaking market's leading corporate-finance title — the magazine that the CFO community reads and the deal community advertises in, the title where the midmarket buyout gets its portrait and the financing gets its analysis.

The brand expanded from print into the full cross-media portfolio: the finance-magazin.de portal for the daily news flow, Finance-TV for the video format, and the Structured FINANCE congress fair as the physical gathering. The 2021 media data's 21st volume documents the continuity: more than two decades of corporate-finance journalism through the financial crisis, the negative-interest era, the private-equity boom, and the deal market's cycles — the magazine that chronicled how German companies financed themselves through the extraordinary monetary-policy decade. In 2024, F.A.Z. Business Media acquired 50 percent of Targecy GmbH, which operates the "Finance Think Tank" events and network offerings for the corporate-finance community — extending the brand's event business into the think-tank format, the community's exchange beyond the magazine's pages. The company's Frankfurt headquarters moved to Pariser Straße 1, 60486 Frankfurt am Main, with the publisher's address long listed as Frankenallee 71–81, 60327 Frankfurt am Main — the Gallusviertel addresses of the F.A.Z.-Gruppe's business-media operations.

Coverage and Content

FINANCE covers the finances of large and medium-sized companies: corporate financing, M&A and private equity (the midmarket buyouts, the mega-deals like Merck/Versum), treasury, structured finance, and the banking and capital-markets topics that shape the CFO's agenda — the negative-interest madness and its consequences, the alternative to the super-regional bank, the ambitious large overview of the midmarket buyouts. The editorial stance is close and critical dialogue with CFOs, banks, and the financial community — entertaining and informative financial journalism of the highest quality that serves the finance department's daily work: the useful tips alongside the deal analysis, the people stories alongside the structures.

The Structured FINANCE congress fair in Stuttgart is the brand's flagship event — the annual gathering of the corporate-finance community, with awards and the deal-making networking that the magazine's readers expect, the physical marketplace where the community the magazine writes about meets. Finance-TV extends the coverage in web-TV format; the portal provides the daily news flow between the six print issues; the special supplements deepen the coverage of focused topics. The Finance Think Tank events, run by the Targecy participation, add the network-offering format: the community's exchange beyond the magazine's pages — the roundtables and discussions where the CFO community debates the financing questions of the moment.

Organization and Ownership

FINANCE is published by F.A.Z. Business Media GmbH, a 100-percent subsidiary of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung GmbH, which is in turn majority-controlled by the FAZIT-Stiftung Gemeinnützige Verlagsgesellschaft mbH — the nonprofit foundation that secures the F.A.Z.'s independence, the ownership structure that keeps the business-media subsidiary within the newspaper group's journalistic standards. The company is headquartered at Pariser Straße 1, 60486 Frankfurt am Main, employs around 140 people at the Frankfurt, Cologne, and Berlin locations, and generates annual revenue of around 20 million euros (2024) — the scale of a specialist B2B publisher. The managing directors are Dominik Heyer and Hannes Ludwig; the advertising director (Objektleiter Sales) is Björn Kring.

The sister brands are DerTreasurer (since 2007, the specialist journal for treasurers and finance officers in the German-speaking world, four print issues a year plus a biweekly e-magazine) and DIE STIFTUNG (founded 2006, the highest-reach magazine for the foundation sector and philanthropy in the German-speaking world, six issues a year) — the portfolio covering corporate finance, treasury, and philanthropy. Since 2024, the group holds 50 percent of Targecy GmbH (Finance Think Tank events). The economics combine subscriptions, the congress fair and event business, and advertising from the banks, law firms, auditors, and private-equity houses that serve the CFO community — the deal community's natural advertising home, the advertisers who want to be seen by the people who decide on financings and mandates. Circulation figures are not publicly confirmed.

Digital Presence

The portal finance-magazin.de is the brand's digital home — the daily news flow for the CFO community between the six print issues, with the Finance-TV web-TV format as the video extension and the special supplements' digital presence. The Structured FINANCE congress fair's digital presence extends the event brand year-round; the Finance Think Tank's network offerings live online. As the F.A.Z.-Gruppe's corporate-finance brand, FINANCE combines the newspaper group's journalistic standards with the specialist publisher's community business: the magazine, the portal, the TV format, the congress fair, and the Finance Think Tank events — the full infrastructure for the German-speaking CFO community, from the deal announcement to the award ceremony, from the financing structure to the people who sign it.