German herald
| German Herold Insurance Group
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|---|---|
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| legal form | Corporation |
| founding | 1922 |
| resolution | 2006 |
| Reason for dissolution | Merger with Zurich companies |
| Seat | Bonn , Germany |
| Branch | Insurance |
The Deutscher Herold insurance group was a German insurance group. The company, founded in 1922, became part of the Zurich Group Germany in 2006 after the Zurich Insurance Group - then known as Zurich Financial Services - had already taken over the majority of the company in 2002. The name was partially retained in the new company because, on the one hand, the life insurance division is managed by Zurich Deutscher Herold Lebensversicherung AG and, on the other hand, the Zurich Deutscher Herold sales brand is used.
History and background
The German Herald was founded on January 15, 1922 in Berlin by the local association of undertakers under the name of the German Funeral Insurance Association as a mutual insurance association in order to enable the costs of the funeral as an insurance benefit. The funeral directors acted on the one hand as agencies, on the other hand they provided the insurance services in the form of funerals. Herbert Worch became general director of the newly founded company as managing director of the association of funeral directors. Three years later, the company expanded the services it offered to include life insurance, and was subsequently renamed the Deutscher Funeral and Life Insurance Association aG Deutscher Herold . In 1927 the company transformed into a stock corporation . After the takeover of Spandauer Lebensversicherung two years later, the name was changed to Deutscher Herold Volks- und Lebensversicherung AG and, based on the size of the insurance portfolio, the company advanced into the five largest insurance companies in Germany.
After the Second World War , the company relocated to West Germany under the management of Worch and from 1947 used Bonn as its headquarters, where it had a neoclassical office building built as the head office in 1949/50 on the corner of Poppelsdorfer Allee and Bonner Talweg . In 1950 the company, which had brokered property insurance as early as 1926, took over a property insurance company as a subsidiary, Hamburger Allgemeine-Versicherung . From then on, the group also served this line of business under the name Deutscher Herold Allgemeine-Versicherung . Worch died in 1953 and his son-in-law Willy Günther took over the management of the family-owned insurance group. In particular with a few innovations by the board member and chief mathematician Bernhard Graewe, the company strengthened its position in the German insurance market at the beginning of the 1970s and at the beginning of 1976 was the seventh largest life insurer.
After Günther's death in 1976, the German Herold Insurance Group got into turmoil. On the one hand, the mismanagement that led to the bankruptcy of the entire group almost burdened the group at the reinsurer founded in 1976 ; on the other hand, some members of the board of directors, which was at times divided, made wrong decisions with sometimes significant financial consequences. This culminated in a claim for damages against the former chairman of the supervisory board, Gerhard Kausch , in 1984 , who was charged with neglecting his supervisory duties in the group.
At the beginning of September 1992, Deutsche Bank , which a few years earlier had founded its own insurance company with db-Leben , became a major shareholder with a stake of 56 percent in Deutsche Herold. At the same time, the two companies agreed on a mutual cooperation, according to which products from the other company were offered via the respective sales structure. The CEO Hans Dieter Ritterbex was subsequently entrusted with the coordination of the insurance activities of Deutsche Bank. In June 1993, Deutsche Herold finally took over db-Leben as a subsidiary, and subsidiaries for health and legal expenses insurance were founded. In this context, Deutsche Bank increased its stake to over 65 percent. Although the company grew faster than the market average in the following years, in 1997 Ritterbex initiated a restructuring program with major job cuts. In the meantime, Deutsche Bank had taken over almost 75 percent of the insurance group, which benefited greatly from the sales of the bank and in particular its subsidiary Deutsche Bank 24 and, in return, invested in funds from the subsidiary DWS in particular . In March 2000, the negotiations between Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank about a merger were about to be concluded; Deutsche Herold should have been transferred to Allianz in this context . Ultimately, however, the merger negotiations failed.
In September 2001 Deutsche Bank confirmed negotiations with Zurich Financial Services about the takeover of Deutsche Herold. After a few days, business was perfect and the companies were taken over by the Swiss group. In autumn 2006, the Zurich Group Germany completed the integration of the legal entities; the subsidiaries, which had previously been operating independently on the market, were merged with the Zurich subsidiaries Zurich Versicherung AG and Zurich Lebensversicherung AG retrospectively as of January 1, 2006 , and thus with the formal legal entity names continued under the Zurich brand.
Even after the takeover, Zurich used the former office building of the headquarters of the German Herald in Bonn. In January 2015, however, the insurance company announced that it would merge the locations in Cologne and Bonn and erect a new company building in Cologne for this purpose, as well as sell the previously used buildings in need of renovation.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Peter Koch: History of the insurance industry in Germany. (P. 226)
- ↑ History ( Memento of the original from January 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF), Zurich - www.zurich.de
- ^ Tuya Roth: Hans Schafgan's photographs. Bonn architecture of the fifties and sixties , inaugural dissertation to obtain a doctorate from the Philosophical Faculty of the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn, Bonn 2007, pp. 80, 154.
- ↑ Zurich Group is considering moving , General-Anzeiger , February 20, 2014
- ↑ zeit.de: "The novelty of Bernhard Graewe" (accessed on September 7, 2012)
- ↑ spiegel.de: "Much unusual" (accessed on September 7, 2012)
- ↑ Bonner General-Anzeiger of September 3, 1992: "Herold: With Deutsche Bank into the future"
- ↑ Handelsblatt dated June 15, 1993: “DEUTSCHER HEROLD / Cooperation is being intensified. Deutsche Bank continues to increase its stake "
- ↑ Handelsblatt dated August 20, 1997: “DEUTSCHER HEROLD / Broad program to improve competitiveness. Extensive job cuts planned. "
- ↑ Handelsblatt of August 17, 2000: "Almost every second policy is mediated by a banker"
- ↑ db.com: "Merger of Deutsche Bank and Dresdner Bank" ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (accessed on September 7, 2012)
- ↑ Bonner General-Anzeiger of September 15, 2001: "German Herald is about to be sold"
- ↑ general-anzeiger-bonn.de: "Zurich Insurance Leaves Bonn" (accessed on December 8, 2015)
