company
Daimler becomes Mercedes-Benz
A Mercedes-Benz plant in the Swabian town of Sindelfingen. Photo: Marijan Murat/dpa
© dpa-infocom GmbH
The traditional company with the star is once again getting a new name. CEO Källenius completes a far-reaching restructuring in Stuttgart. The journey continues – towards luxury.
The car manufacturer Daimler AG will officially say goodbye to its previous company name on Tuesday and will then be called Mercedes-Benz Group AG.
The CEO, Ola Källenius, thus completes a far-reaching corporate restructuring that began at the end of last year with the spin-off of the truck business from Daimler Truck. There have since been two separate companies, both of which are publicly traded. Mercedes-Benz is now concentrating on the car and van business.
The traditional brand with the star should be used as the company name to make the manufacturer more attractive, Källenius said last week. “We see that attention to Mercedes has increased over the past 12 to 18 months,” summed up the CEO.
Establish Mercedes-Benz as a luxury brand
Källenius’ stated goal is to establish Mercedes-Benz as a luxury brand. The CEO sees “a lot of potential” in the share. According to additional information, the name change is to be anchored in the commercial register on Tuesday. According to information from last year, the former Daimler division Mercedes-Benz Cars & Vans employed around 170,000 people.
According to experts, the Mercedes-Benz brand is very valuable. For example, last year it was valued at just under 51 billion US dollars (around 45.7 billion euros) by the US consulting firm Interbrand. In the overview, only the Japanese competitor Toyota performed better among the international car manufacturers. The hit list is led by the US companies Apple and Amazon.
Internally, the renaming was already completed on Saturday. In doing so, the group commemorated the car pioneer Carl Benz, who 136 years ago – on January 29, 1886 – had submitted the patent for the first motor car.
The recent change of name highlights the eventful history of the company. Almost a century ago, in June 1926, Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft and Benz & Cie. merged with the participation of Deutsche Bank to form Daimler-Benz AG.
In the 1990s, the Stuttgart-based company formed DaimlerChysler AG with the US car manufacturer Chrysler under the then CEO Jürgen Schrempp. When the majority stake in Chrysler was sold again, Daimler AG was formed in 2007.