Ever since the fall from grace in July 2002 of Jean-Marie Messier, the hubristic former boss of French media conglomerate Vivendi, and Thomas Middelhoff, ousted soon after from Germany's Bertelsmann, European media executives have kept a low profile猽npicking their predecessors' visions and selling assets. But now there is a new contender for the role of Europe's leading media tycoon: Mathias Doepfner, chief executive of Axel Springer, a big German publishing firm. He is poised to buy Pro-SiebenSat.1, a big television company, and wants to expand elsewhere in Europe. At a dinner in New York for Mr Doepfner last winter, he came across as "a man of extraordinary ambition who wants to rule the world," says one of the guests, who muses that he might even match Mr Messier in the scale of his aims.
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