David Montgomery seems to have a talent for antagonising employees - something you wouldn't guess from his somewhat dapper appearance and soft Ulster accent. When he was cutting a swathe through Mirror Group Newspapers in the 1990s, his nickname, famously, was Rommel - "because Montgomery was on our side". And now that his newspaper group Mecom has built a significant presence in five European countries in less than three years, he has encountered serious opposition in Germany.
Earlier this week I met some representatives from the two largest German papers in the Mecom stable, the Berliner Zeitung and Hamburger Morgenpost. They were dismayed by what has happened to their newspapers since Mecom's takeover. They have learned of a 5m euro cost-cutting programme and in Berlin have watched some 19 journalists walk out of the door.
These people have not been replaced - a big deal with editorial staff now standing at 130 - and journalists see this as a redundancy programme by stealth. The fear is that quality will suffer and in the long-term circulation will fall as a result.
The other big gripe is the controversial position of Josef Depenbrock, the editor-in-chief of Mecom's German business who was elevated to take on the additional role of managing director last year. Insiders talk of a power struggle between him and the Mecom chief digital officer, Peter Skulimma.
When I spoke to Montgomery yesterday, as Mecom reported annual results, he said journalists had to get with the multimedia programme. He wants them to produce journalism across print and online, where the future growth will come from. Montgomery also defended Depenbrock's position, arguing that his journalistic background made him a guarantor of editorial quality.
Behind the squabbles at the papers, the deeper problem is that German newspapers have never known an owner like Montgomery. Many media companies are still owned by families: to take arguably the two biggest names, Bertelsmann is fully in the hands of the Mohns and Axel Springer is still majority-owned by the founder's widow Friede Springer. There is also a cultural suspicion of business, as Susanne Lang of die Tageszeitung explained here in January.
"In Germany it's a completely new phenomenon that a paper is owned by shareholders where in theory 100% of shares can be acquired freely in the market," one German journalist told me this week.
Such companies are answerable to their shareholders and are obliged to seek ever greater returns. They also have to pay off interest on the loans used to buy the companies: profitability becomes the key priority.
"The problem is where the business is financed by loans and you have to pay interest, the burden of the cost of having to pay that interest can only be passed on to the employees," says Michael Klehm of the German journalists' union, DJV. "And they are being constantly pressured to make more profits because they need to find money to fund interest."
Montgomery's answer is that he is a long-term owner and that he is investing in a multimedia future. He told me yesterday: "In return we ask people to join in and ask them to contribute - and indeed that's happening to tremendous effect in other countries and to some extent in Germany... Once Germany starts to respond they will probably do it better than anybody else. These are very small and temporary protests: undoubtedly when the Germans all get involved it will be tremendously successful."
This is more than an Anglo-German culture clash, however. The traditional family ownership of newspapers, which has subjected journalists to the whims of proprietors but also tended to guarantee more investment than the City would countenance, is breaking down.
Look at the pressure on Anthony O'Reilly at Independent News & Media, where 20% shareholder Denis O'Brien is agitating for the sale of the loss-making Independent titles. Or at the New York Times company, where the Sulzberger dynasty is under attack from hard-nosed financial investors.
Here in the UK, you have to look no further than Monty's old company. Trinity Mirror has consistently cut costs - which often means laying off journalists - and looked to digital revenues to compensate for the long-term decline in print. Owned entirely in the market, Trinity is answerable to shareholders and is obliged to do what's best for them.
And to take another example, the demise of the regional press is blamed by many - not least Nick Davies in Flat Earth News - on the corporate ownership into which it has fallen in recent decades.
The battle between Monty and the Germans is just part of a much bigger war between those who want to run newspapers for profit and those who would always put editorial quality first.
