Gerling Group

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Gerling Group

Gerling logo
HDI-Gerling
legal form GmbH
founding May 4, 1904
resolution April 2006
Reason for dissolution fusion
Seat Cologne , Germany
Branch banks and insurance companies

Gereonshof
Former Gerling company headquarters in Cologne

The Gerling Group was an internationally operating Cologne-based multi-line insurance company that was taken over in April 2006 by the Hanover-based Talanx Group, brand name HDI Haftpflichtverband der Deutschen Industrie , Germany's third largest insurance group. The group was fully integrated into HDI.

At the beginning of 2016, Gerling also disappeared as a brand after HDI-Gerling became "HDI Global SE". The Cologne headquarters around the (former) Gereonshof street was converted into residential and commercial space as the Gerling quarter .

In 2005 the Gerling Insurance Group employed around 6400 people in over twenty countries around the world. The premium income recently amounted to approx. 4.56 billion euros, the profit amounted to 158 million euros, after the previous years had been rather loss-making.

history

The Gerling Group was shaped above all by three generations of the Gerling family, the company founder Rudolf Gerling, his son Hans Gerling and grandson Rolf Gerling.

Robert Gerling

Robert Gerling initially founded the Central Insurance Office Robert Gerling & Co. Ges. Mb H. together with the underwear manufacturer Wilhelm Marum on March 11, 1904, and Marum, the Robert Gerling & Co. GmbH Insurance Office , was established on May 4, 1904 with a starting capital of 1,000 marks. When the balance sheet loss of this company had already been determined in November 1904 , Gerling and Marum decided to set up a registered association, which was registered on December 5, 1904 under the name of the R heinischer Insured Association and advised policyholders.

At that time Gerling was already concentrating on industrial insurance , especially fire insurance . On October 23, 1909, he founded the Rheinische Feuerversicherungs-AG, his first own insurance company , which cooperated with the Kronprinz Versicherungs-AG and which merged in December 1936. In early 1914, Marum resigned from the insurance bureau . In the meantime, Gerling was able to afford financially to take over the share capital of 11,200 marks, his brother Richard contributed the remaining 8,800 marks. In January 1917, Robert Gerling created his own reinsurance for in-house reinsurance with Rheinische Versicherungsbank AG - without banking functions . It was created with the help of numerous industrialists and received initial capital of 750,000 marks.

In August 1914, the group, which was spread over five buildings, moved into the recently completed seven-story Deichmannhaus in Trankgasse 7-9 on the fourth floor. After the English occupation forces had confiscated the Deichmannhaus with the rented business premises in the winter of 1918 , the Gerling Group was faced with the need to move its companies and in 1920 acquired the Palais von , built by the architect Hermann Otto Pflaume for Johann Gottlieb von Langen in 1920 Langen in Von-Werth-Straße 14 as the new company headquarters. After the establishment of further insurance companies, Allgemeine Versicherungs-AG was established on February 24, 1918 with a share capital of 7 million marks , which in March 1923 took on the name Gerling Group Allgemeine Versicherungs-AG and as a holding company for the various insurance companies and the 18 regional ones that have since been acquired Property insurance acted. In October 1922, Friedrich Wilhelm, Preussische Lebens- und Garantie-Versicherungs-Actien-Gesellschaft, was part of the Gerling Group.

Meanwhile, millionaire Robert Gerling acquired privately on November 22, 1922 for 41 million inflationary Mark in the villa colony Cologne-Marienburg location Villa Marienburg , which could refer the family because of an ongoing British seizure only 1926th

Hans Gerling

Registered share of 1000 RM of the Gerling Group Allgemeine Versicherungs-AG from March 1, 1937

In an agreement dated July 12, 1934, Robert Gerling transferred the shares in the Gerling Group to his eldest son, Hans , but retained the voting rights until his death. After Robert Gerling died shortly afterwards in January 1935 as a result of acute pneumonia , he did not leave his three sons a legally valid will . In the years that followed, his descendants quarreled in numerous wills before they reached a settlement in April 1958 . His son Hans Gerling only took over the management of the company in 1945. A total of 27 insurance employees were previously killed in an air raid on September 27, 1944.

Since the 1930s, the insurance company has continuously expanded its premises at Von-Werth-Straße 14. In the 1950s, with the participation of the architects Hentrich and Heuser, the office buildings in the direction of Gereonshof (near Friesenplatz ) were extended in a complex manner. The completion of the Gerling high-rise in Cologne's Gereonsviertel on January 25, 1953 set an urban development accent. At the instigation of Hans Gerling, the sculptor Arno Breker contributed to the design. Until the 1980s, what was soon to be known as the Gerling complex was gradually expanded in the direction of Friesenstrasse to become a separate district. After Robert Gerling's death, Walter Forstreuter took over management of the company. Neither the Gerling family nor Forstreuter were members of the NSDAP . Nevertheless, like the competitors, Gerling benefited from orders from the state and the NSDAP. After the war ended in 1945, Hans Gerling , the company's founder's son, was the first German insurance company to be approved by the American military government.

Between 1929 and 1954, Hermes was the only insurance company in Germany that offered all types of credit insurance . Hans Gerling founded as competition on April 20, 1954 Gerling Speziale Kreditversicherungs-AG , which initially Warenkredit- , surety and fidelity insurance business. After Hans Gerling's childhood friend Iwan David Herstatt acquired the insignificant Cologne-based bank Hocker & Co. on June 2, 1955 , Gerling made a contribution of 5 million DM as a limited partner (81.4%; the rest was held by subsidiaries of Gerling -Group) at the bank, which has been operating as "Bankhaus ID Herstatt KGaA" since December 10, 1955 . Due to the majority stake, the Herstatt Bank was a subsidiary of the Gerling Group. As a result of bad speculation by the Herstatt Bank, it got into a banking crisis from June 1973 , from which it no longer recovered. On June 26, 1974, the Federal Banking Supervisory Office withdrew the Herstatt Bank's banking license .

In July 1973, the publicist Günter Wallraff smuggled his way into the company as a porter and house messenger for 2 months and reported on "anachronistic working conditions, arbitrary dismissal, and whims of the distinguished superiors to whom the 'little employees' in the patriarchal insurance company were at the mercy".

In December 1974, under public pressure, Gerling had to pledge 51% of the shares in his group to the Deutsche Bank as collateral , an insurance holding company of Deutsche Industrie (VHDI) consisting of 59 industrial companies - of which Friedrich Karl Flick was the majority shareholder - acquired 25.9%, Zurich Insurance Company took over the remaining 25.1% of the shares . The sale brought 210 million DM into the benchmark of the Herstatt bank, which Gerling paid voluntarily to enable a compulsory settlement . In February 1978, Zurich sold its shares to VHDI. After Gerling bought back a total of 88.8% of the shares in VHDI in January 1986 and the pledge was dissolved again, he regained control of the Gerling Group.

Rolf Gerling

After Hans Gerling's death in August 1991, his son Rolf Gerling took over the company as the sole heir, from which, after high losses due to the consequences of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and damage from the American reinsurance subsidiary in 2003, Gerling reinsurance and the stake in the Credit insurer Gerling NCM were sold. Rolf Gerling now held 94% of the Gerling Group, and Chairman of the Supervisory Board Joachim Theye 6%.

In October 2001, the Gerling Ring-Karree near Friesenplatz was completed and moved to a design by the architect Sir Norman Foster , near the company's headquarters at Gereonshof .

Sale to Talanx

On November 8, 2005 it was officially announced that the Talanx insurance group would take over the operating companies of the Gerling Group for a purchase price of around € 1.4 billion. On April 25, 2006, Talanx and Gerling announced that all approvals for the takeover by Talanx had been received and that the so-called closing could take place at the end of April 2006, thus completing the takeover. This ended the family history of the Gerling Group.

Björn Jansli resigned from his office on May 1, 2006. Herbert K. Haas is the new management spokesman . From November 2006 to the beginning of 2011, the investment company previously named Gerling Investment GmbH operated under the name AmpegaGerling . AmpegaGerling now operates under the name Ampega Investment GmbH . Which was also Gerling Life Insurance AG (GKL) in HDI-Gerling Lebensversicherung renamed. Today it operates under the name HDI Lebensversicherung AG .

The life insurance division and the property and legal expenses insurance division were consolidated and relocated to Hanover in July 2006. As part of the nationwide restructuring, in July 2006 there was official talk of downsizing by up to 1,800 employees. The new owner Talanx sold the Gerling building in Cologne's Gereonsviertel in December 2006 to Frankonia Eurobau AG. From 2010 they were redesigned into an exclusive residential complex under the name Gerling-Quartier . New premises for the life insurance sector were moved into the renovated Rheinhallen on the Cologne-Deutz exhibition grounds in September 2009. The Gerling Quarter was sold in September 2012 by Frankonia Eurobau AG to the previous 50% shareholder Immofinanz .

When HDI-Gerling Industrie Versicherung AG was renamed HDI Global SE , the name Gerling finally disappeared from the insurance industry in January 2016.

Business areas

According to the company, the Gerling Insurance Group was one of the market leaders among industrial insurers in Europe and one of the leading providers of company pension schemes in Germany. The business areas included insurance and financial services for large commercial companies, small and medium-sized companies as well as freelancers and private individuals. Other services included risk analysis and advice as well as asset management.

Others

The Gerling Group had an art collection which in 2008 comprised around 4,500 pictures. The works that have been purchased for the Gerling Ring-Karree are predominantly originals as well as high-quality photographs and some graphics. 20 percent of the art in the Ring-Karree came from established artists, 80 percent of the art was acquired by young artists in the last two years.

Web links

Commons : Gerling Group  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolf von Niebelschütz , Robert Gerling, a dramatic chapter in German insurance history , 1954, p. 67
  2. ↑ Klara van Eyll / Renate Schwärzel, Deutsche Wirtschaftsarchive , Volume 1, 1994, p. 96
  3. ↑ Peter Koch, History of the Insurance Industry in Germany , 2012, p. 141
  4. ↑ Wolf von Niebelschütz, Robert Gerling, a dramatic chapter of German insurance history , 1954, p. 87
  5. ^ F. Steiner Verlag, Zeitschrift für Unternehmensgeschichte, Volumes 50–51, 2005, p. 49
  6. ^ Wolf von Niebelschütz , Robert Gerling: A dramatic capital of German economic history , 1954, p. 189
  7. ↑ 100 years of Gerling - a chronicle
  8. ↑ DER SPIEGEL 17/1958 of April 23, 1958, Der Bruderkrieg , p. 6 ff.
  9. ↑ koelnarchitektur.de: The Gerling buildings in the Friesenviertel ( Memento of the original from February 28, 2009 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. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.koelnarchitektur.de
  10. ^ OV, Von Friedrich Wilhelm zu Gerling - A Century of Life Insurance 1866–1966 , 1966, p. 82
  11. ^ Johannes Ludwig, Investigative Journalism. Research strategies. Swell. Informants . UVK, Konstanz 2002, ISBN 3-89669-348-4 . P. 176.
  12. ↑ Peter Koch, History of the Insurance Industry in Germany , 2012, p. 414
  13. ^ Felix Harbart, HDI-Versicherung builds new corporate headquarters , Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung of July 7, 2007
  14. ↑ Welt.de of July 20, 2006, Talanx cuts 1,800 jobs after Gerling takeover , accessed on June 25, 2014
  15. ^ Frankonia Eurobau
  16. ↑ Gerling-Quartier on the building project
  17. ↑ Immofinanz takes over Gerling-Quartier in Cologne
  18. ↑ LR-Online, insurance industry is losing a big name ( memento of the original from January 10, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Lausitzer Rundschau , January 8, 2016, accessed on January 10, 2016 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.lr-online.de
  19. ↑ Bauwatch, Ring-Karee: The Art Concept