Rolf Gerling

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Rolf Gerling (born December 15, 1954 in Cologne ) is a German insurance company . Until the company was sold to Talanx AG (brand name HDI Haftpflichtverband der Deutschen Industrie ) in 2005, he was the majority owner of the Gerling Group , of which he chaired the Supervisory Board from 1992 to 2002. He later settled in Terre di Pedemonte in Ticino , Switzerland .

Life

Rolf Gerling, son of the insurance company Hans Gerling , grew up in his parents' villa in Marienburg in Cologne. After attending the Montessori elementary school and the Städtisches Schillergymnasium, he completed an internship at the Vereins- und Westbank in Hamburg. From 1974 to 1979 he studied business administration at the University of Zurich and received his doctorate in 1986. In 1982, he completed a second degree in analytical psychology at the CG Jung Institute in Zurich. In 1989 he joined the board of directors of the Gerling insurance group, which went back to his grandfather Robert Gerling and which his father had developed into one of the largest German industrial insurers .

As the sole heir to his father, who died in August 1991, Rolf Gerling moved to the company's supervisory board in the following year, where he was chairman until 2002. To settle inheritance tax, he sold 30% of the group to Deutsche Bank . His initiatives in the operational business were mainly limited to the introduction of muesli in the canteen, recycled furniture and company bicycles for employees. Rolf Gerling did not succeed in giving the group a sustainable structure. E.g. should make the takeover of the US competitor Constitution Re Gerling a factor in the international reinsurance business and enable an IPO, but it turned out to be a gross mistake. The Gerling Group made a loss of around 563 million euros in 2001 and around 700 million in 2002. The group then showed the first signs of disintegration. For example, the profitable credit insurance arm Gerling NCM was sold off in 2003 to save the balance sheet. The German bank gave back its share in the group to get rid of a problem from their point of view, with which Rolf Gerling now held 94% of a sinking ship. Instead of going public, it was now a matter of finding someone who wanted to take over the company.

In November 2005, Rolf Gerling sold the family business to the Talanx insurance group for around one billion dollars, which merged the Gerling Group with HDI . Gerling lives with his German-Canadian wife Katharina, with whom he has a daughter, in Switzerland. He is involved in the field of environmental protection where he sits, for example, as President of his Gerling Foundation on the Board of Trustees of the Research Institute for Organic Agriculture , and manages his real estate holdings through companies such as DufourIm AG in Zurich and holdings in his hometown of Cologne.

capital

Rolf Gerling's fortune is stated in the Forbes 2013 list at around 1.75 billion US dollars. It ranks 868th in the Forbes list worldwide and 52nd in Germany.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Balance: The richest Germans in Switzerland
  2. ↑ Billionaires at forbes.com
personal data
SURNAME Gerling, Rolf
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH December 15, 1954
PLACE OF BIRTH Cologne