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The corporate name DaimlerChrysler has ended as it began nine years ago, with squabbling over what to call the carmaker.
Shareholders approved management's proposal to rename the group simply Daimler AG - erasing an unwelcome legacy of the failed US$36 billion merger in 1998 that yoked Daimler-Benz and Chrysler - but only after investor grumbling.
The great-great-grandniece of German automotive pioneer Carl Benz urged shareholders to restore her ancestor's name to the masthead and right a historic injustice.
"The company could also be called Benz," said Heidemarie Hirsch, whose family tree includes the man who in 1886 filed the first patent for a car. "Give the company back its soul."
Eager to respect the Benz name and head off investor ire, chief executive Dieter Zetsche had earlier said the group would call its passenger car business Mercedes-Benz Cars.
The move means the premium division Mercedes Car Group will become known as Mercedes-Benz Cars, the van unit will be called Mercedes-Benz Vans and DaimlerChrysler Bank will be renamed Mercedes-Benz Bank.
Benz's company merged with that of Gottlieb Daimler in 1926 but his name was sacrificed when the now abandoned transatlantic merger with Chrysler went through.
Wrestling over the group's name nearly torpedoed the Chrysler deal at the start on May 5, 1998. Chrysler chairman Robert Eaton wanted former Daimler-Benz CEO Juergen Schrempp to say the group's new name had to be ChryslerDaimler-Benz. Schrempp said he had already dropped Benz as a compromise and the name had to be DaimlerChrysler or else the deal was off. Chrysler backed down.
This paved the way for a transformational deal that Schrempp crowed was a marriage made in heaven, but which never lived up to its potential.
Fed up with years of yo-yo earnings, the group sold a majority stake in Chrysler to buy out Cerberus Capital Management this year.
"The group name Daimler clearly indicates we are writing a new chapter of our history, while at the same time continuing our tradition as the inventor of the car," Zetsche said.
"And this rich heritage will remain an essential part of our identity - of our DNA, so to speak."
The company paid Ford US$20 million this year for rights to the extended use of the Daimler name.
The name change will cost another €70 million ($133 million) on top of the Ford payment.
In the first nine months of the year, Mercedes Car - the world's second-biggest premium carmaker after BMW - achieved a slight increase of 0.9 per cent in vehicle sales.
- Reuters
