Berth Milton, the founder and chairman of Private Media Group, has been reappointed president and CEO of one of the top European companies in adult. Former CEO and president of Private Media Group Charles Prast is no longer with company, for reasons not explained.
The news comes just a few days after it was announced that Private had suffered third quarter revenue losses of approximately $2 million.
Milton was CEO until 2001 and built up Private from its origins as a publisher of one adult magazine in 1991 to one of the largest adult companies in the world, and one of a handful that is traded publicly.
Milton built a multimedia empire from Private, founded by his father. Private is often described as the world’s first legal adult magazine, having been founded in 1965 in Switzerland, where laws on sexuality were lax.
Milton diversified the company’s assets so that they were involved in video, DVD, cable, hotel systems, and the Internet. He formed the Private Media Group, Inc. to reflect the diversity of the company’s holdings when he took the company public. He served as CEO until 2001, when he stepped down.
Berth Milton said in a statement, “I am delighted to be Chief Executive once again of the company I have helped to build up over the last decade. We have experienced problems of cost control and growth in the last two years, but measures have been put into place to reverse this."
“We have many new developments in the pipeline and I am looking forward to bringing these to fruition. This will be a very exciting time of sustained growth and new product launches for Private Media.”
Private is planning to launch two pay-per-view cable channels in the United States by the end of the year.
