As of Saturday, the CEO of Daimler AG is the CEO of Mercedes-Benz Group AG.
(Photo: Reuters)
Munich It is the most visible symbol of the radical change at the automobile manufacturer Daimler: the Dax group will be given a new name on January 29th. As of this Saturday, the company will trade as Mercedes-Benz Group AG.
“We didn’t choose the day by chance,” said CEO Ola Källenius in an interview with journalists on Friday. The renaming took place exactly 136 years after Carl Benz submitted his patent for the world’s first motor vehicle.
“It’s a new start,” said Källenius. The Swede prepared it at the end of last year. The truck and bus business (Daimler Truck) was separated and listed on the stock exchange as an independent company. With the upcoming name change, the manager wants to complete the conversion of the car manufacturer from a rather sluggish industrial conglomerate to a focused supplier of luxurious cars and vans.
The new name will not be officially entered in the commercial register until February 1, but internally the change of name to Mercedes-Benz Group AG is to be celebrated at the weekend. CEO Källenius has already “changed” his employee ID card. He temporarily stuck the Mercedes star over the Daimler lettering. “I admit that’s a bit the Swabian solution,” joked the 52-year-old, pointing out that the proverbial Stuttgart economy mentality is by no means going away.
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The company now has its fourth name in a quarter of a century. The former Daimler-Benz AG became first Daimler-Chrysler, then Daimler and now Mercedes-Benz. This means that the core brand is also the focus of attention on the outside. The industrial icon based in the Neckar Valley has seen more twists and turns in its history.
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The group once overwhelmed itself as a global corporation, failed as an integrated technology group and dreamed in vain of becoming a fully networked mobility provider. Under the leadership of Ola Källenius, the company now wants to focus on its core business and produce the most desirable cars in the world.
The name Daimler has functioned as an umbrella brand in recent years, with a wide range of vehicles running under the Mercedes-Benz brand. This distinction caused confusion among customers, business partners and some investors. “The fact that we are now making the company name part of the program has a psychological effect,” believes Källenius, with a view to the stock market valuation of his group.
Källenius continues to keep an eye on Tesla’s market value
Just because Mercedes is now also called Mercedes, the company will not automatically get more investors. “But we see that attention to Mercedes as an investment target has increased in the last twelve to 18 months,” explained Källenius. And the clear separation of Mercedes-Benz as a car manufacturer and Daimler Truck as a truck producer results in potential for value crystallization.
The truck manufacturer has been operating as an independent company since December 10, 2021.
(Photo: Bloomberg)
The future Mercedes-Benz Group AG currently has a market capitalization of 74 billion euros. That’s about a tenth of what the electric car maker Tesla is currently worth on the stock market. Källenius wants to minimize this valuation difference in the coming years.
The new name could also be useful in the battle for the best minds. “We want to use the brand to increase the attractiveness of the company,” said the manager. Nevertheless, the renaming is also a turning point: the name of the second founder, Gottlieb Daimler, will disappear from the group name.
Benz and Daimler never met in person, but independently of each other they developed the world’s first cars at the same time in 1886, thereby creating the forerunner companies of Mercedes-Benz and Daimler Truck. At the time, Benz was working in Mannheim, while Daimler was working on his inventions in a garden shed in Cannstatt near Stuttgart.
However, the carmaker Mercedes legally parted ways with the “Daimler” brand last year. As part of the spin-off of the truck business, the rights to the name were transferred to Daimler Truck AG for 9.7 million euros.
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