Berlin, Stuttgart/Germany, July 6, 2012

Mercedes-Benz Bank

New Service Center in the heart of Berlin

Mercedes-Benz Bank has officially inaugurated its new Service Center in the heart of downtown Berlin near busy Alexanderplatz square.  The ultra-modern Service Center is already home to some 500 employees and  two hundred additional employees are to be added by 2015.

Enlarge

Bodo Uebber (right), CFO of Daimler AG, and Klaus Entenmann (left), CEO Daimler Financial Services, officially present the key to the new Service Center of Mercedes-Benz Bank in Berlin to Bank CEO, Franz Reiner (2nd from left), and the two  Service Center heads, Tom Schneider (2nd from right) and Jochen Sutor (center).

Daimler CFO Bodo Uebber commented at the grand opening: “Our new Service Center will be of great strategic importance for the growth of Daimler Financial Services in Europe. Here, our business operations will not only include vehicle financing, vehicle leasing and automotive insurance for Mercedes-Benz Bank’s commercial customers in Germany, but will eventually also encompass the provision of services for other European countries – for example, starting in October, the center will be serving Spanish customers.”

The lease concluded for 13 floors of the 21-story Königstadt Carree building at the intersection of Mollstrasse and Otto-Braun-Strasse will provide Mercedes-Benz Bank with over 13,000 m2 of office space for an initial term of ten years. Franz Reiner, Executive Board Chairman of Mercedes-Benz Bank AG, is pleased with the outcome: “We selected this attractive and centrally located site on purpose, because we wanted our employees to work at a first-class location, complete with modern architecture, state-of-the art technology and outstanding transport connections. With its 700-strong staff, the Berlin Service Center will be the largest of Mercedes-Benz Bank’s three German operating locations, and will serve our nearly 500,000 commercial customers, who account for a contract volume of almost 13 billion euros. Per year, this translates into about three million contacts with customers.” The company’s headquarters are located in Stuttgart, while a third operating location, a Service Center for private customers, is located in Saarbrücken. All told, Mercedes-Benz Bank employs a workforce of some 1,500 people in Germany.

The grand opening of the Berlin Service Center, which straddles the two boroughs of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg and Mitte, was also attended and welcomed by the respective city officials. In the words of Peter Becker, deputy mayor of the district of Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg: “We are very pleased that a prestigious company like Mercedes-Benz Bank has decided to set up operations in Berlin, thereby creating jobs for qualified personnel in the middle of the city. This choice of location shows that the Daimler Group feels a close affinity for Berlin and that it sees a bright future here.”

Mitte’s district mayor Christian Hanke added his own praise:“Berlin is an attractive location for business. The choice made by Mercedes-Benz Bank is further proof of this. One of the reasons the Bank opted for Berlin is that the company has its sights on all of Europe. In our city, the Mercedes-Benz Bank is sure to find a cosmopolitan environment as well as plenty of qualified people with great language skills.”

At the grand opening, Mercedes-Benz Bank also sent a clear signal that it intends to become an active player in the commercial and social life of Berlin, like its parent Daimler Financial Services (DFS) before it. As announced in 2010, the DFS Headquarters will be relocating from Berlin to Stuttgart this summer. In previous years, Daimler’s Financial Services division has acted as patron to numerous charitable undertakings, including the StreetUniverCity educational project, the C/O Berlin Forum for Visual Dialogues or the Kultur- und Begegnungsstätte Kreativhaus e.V., located in the Fischerinsel quarter.

Daimler in Berlin

Of course there are other major Daimler locations in the Berlin metropolitan area as well: Mercedes-Benz Sales Germany, which is scheduled to move in 2013 from Potsdamer Platz to a newly constructed building in Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg; the components plant in Berlin-Marienfelde; the van-assembly plant in Ludwigsfelde; the Mercedes-Benz company-owned sales and service outlet at Salzufer; or the Shared Services Center for finance and accounting run by Daimler Group Services Berlin on Schicklerstrasse. All told, Daimler Group companies employ more than 8,000 people throughout greater Berlin!

About Mercedes-Benz Bank

With more than one million customers, Mercedes-Benz Bank is one of Germany’s leading automotive credit institutions, supporting Daimler’s domestic vehicle sales by providing financial services such as vehicle leasing, financing and insurance. The aggregate volume of leasing and financing contracts for passenger and commercial vehicles serviced by the bank amounts to over 17 billion euros. Moreover, Mercedes-Benz Bank manages over 11 billion euros in funds from direct customers. As of the 2011 year-end, the bank’s parent company, Daimler Financial Services, managed a worldwide contract volume of 71.7 billion euros across almost 40 countries.