Ralf Dümmel's company lays off around 30 employees

The "Die Höhle der Löwen" judge has to cut jobs following the merger of his DS Group with Georg Kofler's Social Chain AG.

The DS Group of "Die Höhle der Löwen" juror Ralf Dümmel is cutting almost 30 of its 500 jobs. This was reported by the Hamburger Abendblatt. In October 2021, Dümmel's company was acquired by Social Chain AG from co-juror Georg Kofler for 220 million euros. According to the Lebensmittel-Zeitung employees in sales, marketing, logistics and purchasing.

A spokeswoman for the company told the Abendblatt newspaper that the cuts were due to the overall economic situation. Since the takeover, the share price of Social Chain AG has fallen by 90 percent. The redundancies are part of a cost-cutting process and restructuring. Kofler will become CEO of the Group on January 1, 2023. He was previously Chairman of the Supervisory Board without an operational role. Dümmel is moving from his position as Board Member for Product, Sales and Purchasing at Social Chain back to the DS Group, where he will once again be the sole Managing Director.

At the time of the takeover, Social Chain and the DS Group had a combined turnover of more than 600 million euros. The aim was to achieve sales of over one billion euros in 2023. However, the sales forecast in August 2022 already showed that this was unlikely to happen. As part of its cost-cutting measures, the Group has already sold off smaller subsidiaries.