When Bauer agreed to acquire Emap’s consumer media business at the end of last year, tremors reverberated through the British group’s offices. The Germans were coming, but would they be wielding the axe when they arrived?

Yes, was the short answer. Within weeks it emerged that the former Emap magazines First and New Woman would close, a marked shift from Emap’s strategy, with its £12 million investment in the launch of First the previous year.

Staff wondered which magazines would be next and employees at the radio division were similarly concerned. Most questioned whether a cost-cutting programme would be on the agenda, as the two industries have faced a volatile advertising market and many titles, particularly men’s magazines, have suffered as readers move online.

So the staff sat tight, waiting for the bad news – and the bad news failed to materialise. Talk to the company now and senior employees are often reduced to bland statements. “It’s business as usual,” are the words uttered by most senior Bauer employees, The German group, which first entered the UK with Bellamagazine in 1987 and which has 238 magazines in 15 countries, may merely have been flexing its muscles on arrival, clarifying that the new regime would not settle for second-rate performance, but it is not about to admit it. The Hamburg-based company is notoriously secretive. Understood, for example, to have some involvement in erotic websites and magazines, which are not under the Bauer label, the group prefers to talk only about Bauer-branded magazines.

“The porn sites and magazines that you are talking of belong to a subsidiary of a subsidiary. I can, therefore, not give you further information on that topic,” a Bauer spokesman said.

Such reticence comes from the top. Heinz Bauer, the helicopter-flying chief executive and the fourth generation of Bauer owners, whose conservative politics once reportedly extended to personally flying workers over a picket line, is famously uncommunicative.

“Mr Bauer himself is very media-shy. You won’t find him in the German press, either. He’ll speak to press once a year at Bauer’s annual press conference,” Christian Sommer, the Germany-based Bauer spokesman, said.

What is known is that the tycoon, 66, who owns 100 per cent of the company, is ranked at No 410 on the Forbes rich list, with a net worth of £1.9 billion. “He is viewed by many in Germany as being very careful with every penny,” one German publishing source said, adding that he looks after “every pencil”.

Bauer sources said that the group, which has a turnover of €1.79 billion a year, is in no rush to make changes in Britain, with sizeable cuts to back-room services from the plc, something that one would expect to be undertaken immediately before the closure of magazines, still at least a year away, according to one senior source.

The two British businesses - Bauer Consumer Media, the former Emap business, and H Bauer Publishing – have been kept separate and are likely to remain so. The divisions provide different offerings, with H Bauer titles, such as Take a Break, That’s Life! and TV Choice, of the more downmarket variety, and Bauer Consumer Media more midmarket, with titles including Heat, Closer and Empire.

Senior staff have not been moved on, with Paul Keenan, the former head of Emap’s consumer division, and Dee Ford, Emap’s former head of radio, keeping their posts. There is also no sign of any of Mr Bauer’s four daughters coming to the UK. While they have roles at the Bauer empire, only his youngest, Saskia, has worked in Britain, albeit for a few months.

The industry consensus is that Bauer is satisfied with the former Emap business and its staff, believing that, despite difficult advertising conditions, it is in a relatively healthy state. Industry sceptics, however, think that Bauer is simply finding its feet and that the changes will come. Bauer does not have to answer to shareholders and can afford to take its time.

“Heinz Bauer will do everything in the most cost-effective way possible,” one German publishing source said, adding that cost cuts were likely to come eventually at the British titles.

However, the source added that the group, which has been an undisputed success in downmarket gossip and tele-vision listings magazines in the UK and Germany, is keen to make its mark in midmarket magazines and radio, of which the Emap acquisition is its first big move into the medium, and knows that it cannot afford to slip up.

Matador, Bauer’s recent men’s glossy launch in Germany, which has a paid circulation of 163,041 copies, will be taken off the market this year. A Bauer spokesman said that “it could not reach economic aims in a highly competitive segment”.

The sell-off of magazines is a possibility, according to industry speculators. Bauer could decide that the specialist magazines, which were part of Emap’s consumer magazines portfolio, are not a strategic fit. These could attract interest from private equity groups.

But in the meantime, it is “business as usual” at Bauer – that is until Mr Bauer and team decide the time is ripe for change.

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