In the wake of the expansion of the group, XDC/FTT will be resetting the course for its European sales activities at the beginning of next year.
The company announced that, in the future, it was planning to split up its pan-European company structure into the territories Western and Central Europe as well as South-Eastern Europe supervised by two umbrella organisations. In this context, the Austrian branch FTT Digital Cinema GmbH headed by Thomas Rüttgers will be responsible for the territory South-Eastern Europe with Austria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, and Russia as well as the former CIS countries.
In contrast, the German branch Film Ton Technik Hannsdieter Rüttgers will be responsible for the territory Western and Central Europe with Germany, Benelux, Spain, Poland and Czech Republic including all FTT affiliates in such countries. Frank Schmitz will remain Sales Director for Germany reporting to Till Cussmann who will be heading sales for the whole territory Western and Central Europe. Jérôme Michel who has been working in the head office in Liège in recent years will join the German sales team from the 1st of January.
In the framework of this restructuring, there will be a change in the management of Film Ton Technik Hannsdieter Rüttgers GmbH: Thomas Rüttgers will step down from his position as Managing Director Germany and Serge Plasch will take his position from the 1st of January 2012 heading from then on the board of management of the parent company XDC in Liège as well as of the largest subsidiary of the group. “It has now become important to change the structure of our group in order to put our pan-European approach into practice as effectively as possible. With Thomas Rüttgers we have an industry veteran who knows the cinema business from scratch and who has already gained a foothold in Central and Eastern Europe in recent years,” said Plasch. He went on saying that one was sure to have given these growing markets requiring more support into the right hands.
Besides conquering new markets FTT Digital Cinema GmbH is to support the existing branch offices in their sales activities more strongly. “There is an extraordinary potential in these markets as the cinema partly has a totally different value as it has here“, stated Rüttgers. He said that due to this fact one could not finally estimate which power would come from the digital conversion. The new sales structure shall become effective on 1st April 2012. Rüttgers and his team will then move to new offices in Düsseldorf.
