Chrysler Group LLC (pronounced /ˈkraɪslər/) is a multinational automaker headquartered in the Detroit suburb of Auburn Hills, Michigan. Chrysler was first organized as the Chrysler Corporation in 1925.[3]
On June 10, 2009, Chrysler Group LLC emerged from a Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy and was sold to the Italian automaker Fiat.[4][5] Fiat holds a 30% stake in the new company, with an option to increase its stake to 35%, and up to 51%, if it meets financial and developmental goals for the company.[6] Fiat's stake cannot go beyond 49% until the government has been paid back in full.
The arrests marked the second time that Chrysler workers have been caught drinking or using drugs at the Jefferson North assembly plant in the past six months.
In September, Chrysler fired 13 workers at the plant after local television showed them drinking beer and smoking what appeared to be marijuana at a park near the plant during lunch break.
After a federal bailout in 2009 that handed management control of Chrysler to Fiat SpA (FIA.MI), executives had touted the revamped Jefferson North plant as an early success of the turnaround strategy.
The plant marked the first Chrysler plant retooled to take advantage of Fiat manufacturing programs intended to shore up Chrysler's lagging reputation for quality.
President Barack Obama visited the plant last summer as it readied the launch of the all-new Jeep Grand Cherokee, Chrysler's first major product launch since the bailout.
Chrysler said in a statement that it had cooperated with a unit of the Macomb County Sheriff's department in making the recent arrests.
"Chrysler Group will continue to cooperate with local law enforcement as requested to aggressively pursue any employee who violates state law," the company said.
"The safety and security of all Chrysler Group employees is our first priority and we will continue to act accordingly," it said.
The three workers had not been arraigned and were not identified. The timing of the arrest and the exact nature of the charges they could face were not immediately clear.
The corporation's problems started in the immediate postwar period. The ambition and spirit that drove the company to constant innovation and experimentation in the early days had been lost. The auto market had exhausted fundamental engineering breakthroughs, and American tastes had changed. It seemed that the public was more excited by the sleeker, less traditional, and sometimes less reliable models being produced by Chrysler's rivals. In short, the car industry was becoming a marketer's game, and Chrysler's management was not playing.
In 1950, L.L. Colbert, a lawyer hired by Walter Chrysler in 1929, became the corporation's president. By this time, some major overhauling was necessary, and Colbert hired the management consulting firm of McKinsey and Company. Three reforms were instituted: Chrysler developed international markets for its cars, its management was centralized, and the role of the engineering department was redefined.
Colbert's reforms did little to revive the company's flagging fortunes, and two years later there was another change of management. Lynn Townsend, the new corporate head, proved to be more effective. He consolidated the Chrysler and Plymouth car divisions, closed some unproductive plants, and generally tightened operations; he also reduced the workforce and installed an IBM computer system to replace 700 members of the clerical staff. Most important, he enhanced sales by improving the quality of the Chrysler automobile, introducing the best warranty the industry had yet seen and instituting a more aggressive marketing policy. In less than five years, Townsend had revitalized the corporation.
Success led to expansion: an aerospace division was formed, and Chrysler became the prime contractor for the Saturn booster rocket. By the end of the 1960s, Townsend's international strategy yielded plants in 18 foreign countries. Before the decade was over, however, the domestic market was undergoing major changes. Inflation was taking its toll on U.S. auto manufacturers, imports of foreign vehicles had substantially increased, and the price of crude oil had risen drastically. Chrysler's troubles were compounded by internal factors: the company was more concerned with competing against Ford and GM than in adapting itself to the rapidly changing market; it did not produce enough of its popular compact cars to meet consumer demand; and it had an overstock of larger vehicles.
The corporation reported a $4 million loss in 1969 and was operating at only 68 percent of its capacity; the previous year, it had earned profits of $122 million. Car prices were substantially reduced, but this did little to solve the underlying problems. John J. Riccardo, an accountant, succeeded to the presidency and immediately set about reducing expenses. Salaries, work force, and budget were all cut, and the company experimented with the marketing of foreign-made cars.
Unfortunately, Chrysler seemed incapable of reading the public mood: it narrowed and shortened Dodge and Chrysler models to bring prices down, but sales also tumbled; it continued to make Imperials long after Cadillacs and Lincolns had demonstrated their superiority in the luxury market; and it greeted the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo with a large inventory of gas-guzzlers. Losses in 1974 totaled a massive $52 million, and the next year's deficit was five times that amount.
The company experienced a brief respite in 1976 and 1977. Its trucks were in demand and foreign subsidiaries turned in good results, but domestic car sales remained a problem. Riccardo further consolidated North American operations and increased manufacturing capacity for compact cars. By the time Chrysler became a significant contender in that market, however, American car buyers were showing a distinct preference for the reliable and relatively inexpensive Japanese compacts. The days of U.S. manufacturing hegemony appeared to be over.
A loss of $205 million in 1978 led many industry watchers to wonder if Chrysler's rollercoaster finances could rebound from this latest big dip. The syndicate of banks (with Manufacturers Hanover Trust in the vanguard), which for years had been pouring money into Chrysler, panicked. Incredibly, many of the smaller banks had agreed to virtually unlimited lines of credit on the assumption that the company would never need to use them.
However, complex and highly charged negotiations eventually saved Chrysler from bankruptcy. The federal government agreed to guarantee loans up to $1.5 billion, provided Chrysler raised $2 billion on its own. Politicians could not justify such a massive bailout, however, without changes in Chrysler's management. Riccardo, who had diligently fought against heavy odds, had to go.
It was left to the charismatic Lee Iacocca, who took over in 1978, to preside over Chrysler's comeback. An ex-Ford man with a flair for marketing and public relations, Iacocca took Chrysler's problems to the people, explaining that the company's failure would mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and could seriously damage the economy of the state of Michigan. Despite popular mythology and the near-adulation of Iacocca in some quarters, many observers suggested that Riccardo was in large part responsible for forging the agreement that gave Chrysler a new lease on life. In any event, the Chrysler Loan Guarantee Bill passed the U.S. Congress on December 27, 1979 and guaranteed $1.2 billion in loans to Chrysler.
During the early 1980s, Iacocca's skills as a superb television salesman were of crucial importance as Chrysler lost nearly $1.8 billion in 1980--the largest loss ever for a U.S. company--and another $475 million in 1981, before returning to the black in 1982. In August 1983 Chrysler was able to pay off the government loan guarantees seven years early, with the government making a $350 million profit on its investment. Chrysler's road to recovery was a difficult one, demanding the closure of several plants and the reduction of the company's workforce. Once restructured, Chrysler scrapped its plans to diversify and divested the Gulfstream Aerospace unit it had purchased five years earlier, selling it to a New York investment firm for $825 million in early 1990. Two other units in the company's Chrysler Technologies subsidiary--Electrospace Systems and Airborne Systems--were slated for divestiture as well, which underscored Iacocca's intent to create a leaner, more sharply focused company. Meanwhile, there were two key developments in the 1980s that helped form the foundation for the 1990s resurgence: the introduction of the minivan in 1984 and the acquisition three years later of American Motors Corporation and its Jeep brand for $1.2 billion.
Reorganized as such, Chrysler entered the 1990s braced for a full recovery, but the economy did not cooperate. The decline in automotive sales during the fourth quarter of 1989--the company's first fourth quarter decline since 1982--portended a more crippling slump to come, as an economic recession gripped businesses of all types, both domestically and abroad. Net income in 1990 slipped to $68 million, then plunged to a $795 million loss the following year, $411 million of which was attributable to losses incurred by the company's automotive operations. Mired in an economic downturn, Chrysler appeared destined for more of the same, rather than headed toward recovery as Iacocca had hoped, but part of the reason for 1991's losses also led to the company's first step toward genuine recovery.
Partly to blame for the $795 million loss in 1991 were the high preproduction and introduction costs associated with Chrysler's new Jeep Grand Cherokee and increased production costs at the company's St. Louis minivan plant. These two types of vehicles--minivans and sport utility vehicles--represented the key to Chrysler's recovery. The popularity of these vehicles, coupled with significant price advantages over Japanese models, fueled Chrysler's resurgence. In 1992, Chrysler turned its $795 million loss the year before into a $723 million gain. It was a signal achievement, accomplished in Iacocca's last year as CEO. Taking over during 1992 was Robert Eaton, who was hired away from GM, where he was head of European operations. Chrysler then went on to enjoy its most successful year ever, with 1994 earnings of $3.7 billion on revenues of $52.2 billion.
The good news at Chrysler continued into the late 1990s, after the company managed to fend off a $22 billion buyout proposed by billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian in 1995. The long prosperity and low gasoline prices of the middle to late 1990s created a huge demand for large vehicles, and Chrysler was producing hot models in each of the hottest segments: the Dodge Ram pickup truck; the Town & Country minivan; and several sport utility vehicles--the Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Jeep Wrangler, and the Dodge Durango. Questions about the quality of Chrysler products continued to pop up, but the company's share of the U.S. auto market reached as high as 16.7 percent in 1996, the highest level since 1968. In 1996, the year Chrysler moved into new headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan, sales reached $61.4 billion.
The Creation and Early Years of DaimlerChrysler
Daimler-Benz Chief Executive Jürgen Schrempp had concluded as early as 1996 that his company's automotive operations needed a partner to compete in the increasingly globalized marketplace. Chrysler's Eaton was drawing the same conclusion in 1997 based on two factors emerging around the same time: the Asian economic crisis, which was cutting into demand, and worldwide excess auto manufacturing capacity, which was looming and would inevitably lead to industry consolidation. With annual global overcapacity as high as 18.2 million vehicles predicted for the early 21st century, it became clearer that Daimler-Benz and Chrysler could survive as merely regional players if they continued to go it alone.
After several months of negotiations, Daimler-Benz and Chrysler reached a merger agreement in May 1998 to create DaimlerChrysler AG in a $37 billion deal. The deal was consummated in November 1998, forming an auto behemoth with total revenues of $130 billion, factories in 34 countries on four continents, and combined annual unit sales of 4.4 million cars and trucks. The two companies fit well together geographically, Daimler strong in Europe and Chrysler in North America, and in terms of product lines, with Daimler's luxurious and high-quality passenger cars and Chrysler's line of low-production-cost trucks, minivans, and sport utility vehicles. Although this was ostensibly a merger of equals--the company set up co-headquarters in Stuttgart and Auburn Hills, naming Eaton and Schrempp co-chairmen--it soon became clear that the Germans were taking over the Americans. DaimlerChrysler was set up as a German firm for tax and accounting purposes, and the early 2000 departures of Thomas Stallkamp, the initial head of DaimlerChrysler's U.S. operations, and Eaton (who was originally slated to remain until as late as November 2001) left Schrempp in clear command of the company.
DaimlerChrysler AG--the third-largest car maker in the world--is the product of the November 1998 merger of Daimler-Benz AG of Germany and Chrysler Corporation of the United States. Vehicles built by the resultant powerhouse include Mercedes-Benz luxury passenger cars; a microcompact car sold under the name Smart; Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge cars, pickup trucks, minivans, and sport utility vehicles; and commercial vehicles, including vans, trucks, and buses, under the brand names Mercedes-Benz, Freightliner, Sterling, Setra, and Western Star Trucks. The company's revenue stream is heavily weighted toward the United States and Europe--the Mercedes Car Group and the Chrysler Group divisions account for the majority of company sales. The company has been plagued with problems in recent years related partly to its investment in Mitsubishi Motors. Its troubled Chrysler division experienced a $637 million loss in 2003 due to restructuring costs and slowing U.S. sales. In addition to its vehicle manufacturing operations, DaimlerChrysler is a leading provider of information technology services in Germany and offers a variety of financial services--including vehicle sales and leasing financing, dealer financing, and insurance services--primarily in North America and Europe. The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), which is 33 percent-owned by DaimlerChrysler, operates as the world's second-largest aerospace and defense company.
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated:1998
Employees:362,063
Sales:EUR 136.4 billion ($171.8 billion) (2003)
Stock Exchanges:New York Euronext Paris Frankfurt Tokyo Zurich
Ticker Symbol
CX
NAIC:336111 Automobile Manufacturing; 336411 Aircraft Manufacturing; 421110 Automobile and Other Motor Vehicle Wholesalers; 522220 Sales Financing; 532112 Passenger Cars Leasing
Key Dates:
1883: Carl Benz forms Benz & Companies in Mannheim.
1890: Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft is incorporated.
1924: Walter P. Chrysler introduces the Chrysler Six model.
1926: Daimler and Benz are merged to form Daimler-Benz AG, which begins producing cars under the name Mercedes-Benz.
1928: Chrysler acquires Dodge Corporation.
1944: Most of Daimler-Benz's plants are destroyed in Allied bombing raids.
1979: Through passage of the Chrysler Loan Guarantee Bill, the U.S. government guarantees $1.2 billion in loans to Chrysler.
1984: Chrysler introduces the first minivan.
1987: Chrysler acquires American Motors Corporation.
1993: Daimler-Benz becomes the first German firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
1995: Jürgen Schrempp takes over as Daimler-Benz's chairman and CEO; company posts losses of nearly $4 billion, the largest in German history.
1998: Daimler-Benz and Chrysler merge to form DaimlerChrysler AG.
2001: Dieter Zetsche launches a major restructuring effort at the Chrysler division.
Address:
Epplestrasse 225
70546 Stuttgart
Germany
On June 10, 2009, Chrysler Group LLC emerged from a Chapter 11 reorganization bankruptcy and was sold to the Italian automaker Fiat.[4][5] Fiat holds a 30% stake in the new company, with an option to increase its stake to 35%, and up to 51%, if it meets financial and developmental goals for the company.[6] Fiat's stake cannot go beyond 49% until the government has been paid back in full.
The arrests marked the second time that Chrysler workers have been caught drinking or using drugs at the Jefferson North assembly plant in the past six months.
In September, Chrysler fired 13 workers at the plant after local television showed them drinking beer and smoking what appeared to be marijuana at a park near the plant during lunch break.
After a federal bailout in 2009 that handed management control of Chrysler to Fiat SpA (FIA.MI), executives had touted the revamped Jefferson North plant as an early success of the turnaround strategy.
The plant marked the first Chrysler plant retooled to take advantage of Fiat manufacturing programs intended to shore up Chrysler's lagging reputation for quality.
President Barack Obama visited the plant last summer as it readied the launch of the all-new Jeep Grand Cherokee, Chrysler's first major product launch since the bailout.
Chrysler said in a statement that it had cooperated with a unit of the Macomb County Sheriff's department in making the recent arrests.
"Chrysler Group will continue to cooperate with local law enforcement as requested to aggressively pursue any employee who violates state law," the company said.
"The safety and security of all Chrysler Group employees is our first priority and we will continue to act accordingly," it said.
The three workers had not been arraigned and were not identified. The timing of the arrest and the exact nature of the charges they could face were not immediately clear.
The corporation's problems started in the immediate postwar period. The ambition and spirit that drove the company to constant innovation and experimentation in the early days had been lost. The auto market had exhausted fundamental engineering breakthroughs, and American tastes had changed. It seemed that the public was more excited by the sleeker, less traditional, and sometimes less reliable models being produced by Chrysler's rivals. In short, the car industry was becoming a marketer's game, and Chrysler's management was not playing.
In 1950, L.L. Colbert, a lawyer hired by Walter Chrysler in 1929, became the corporation's president. By this time, some major overhauling was necessary, and Colbert hired the management consulting firm of McKinsey and Company. Three reforms were instituted: Chrysler developed international markets for its cars, its management was centralized, and the role of the engineering department was redefined.
Colbert's reforms did little to revive the company's flagging fortunes, and two years later there was another change of management. Lynn Townsend, the new corporate head, proved to be more effective. He consolidated the Chrysler and Plymouth car divisions, closed some unproductive plants, and generally tightened operations; he also reduced the workforce and installed an IBM computer system to replace 700 members of the clerical staff. Most important, he enhanced sales by improving the quality of the Chrysler automobile, introducing the best warranty the industry had yet seen and instituting a more aggressive marketing policy. In less than five years, Townsend had revitalized the corporation.
Success led to expansion: an aerospace division was formed, and Chrysler became the prime contractor for the Saturn booster rocket. By the end of the 1960s, Townsend's international strategy yielded plants in 18 foreign countries. Before the decade was over, however, the domestic market was undergoing major changes. Inflation was taking its toll on U.S. auto manufacturers, imports of foreign vehicles had substantially increased, and the price of crude oil had risen drastically. Chrysler's troubles were compounded by internal factors: the company was more concerned with competing against Ford and GM than in adapting itself to the rapidly changing market; it did not produce enough of its popular compact cars to meet consumer demand; and it had an overstock of larger vehicles.
The corporation reported a $4 million loss in 1969 and was operating at only 68 percent of its capacity; the previous year, it had earned profits of $122 million. Car prices were substantially reduced, but this did little to solve the underlying problems. John J. Riccardo, an accountant, succeeded to the presidency and immediately set about reducing expenses. Salaries, work force, and budget were all cut, and the company experimented with the marketing of foreign-made cars.
Unfortunately, Chrysler seemed incapable of reading the public mood: it narrowed and shortened Dodge and Chrysler models to bring prices down, but sales also tumbled; it continued to make Imperials long after Cadillacs and Lincolns had demonstrated their superiority in the luxury market; and it greeted the 1973-74 Arab oil embargo with a large inventory of gas-guzzlers. Losses in 1974 totaled a massive $52 million, and the next year's deficit was five times that amount.
The company experienced a brief respite in 1976 and 1977. Its trucks were in demand and foreign subsidiaries turned in good results, but domestic car sales remained a problem. Riccardo further consolidated North American operations and increased manufacturing capacity for compact cars. By the time Chrysler became a significant contender in that market, however, American car buyers were showing a distinct preference for the reliable and relatively inexpensive Japanese compacts. The days of U.S. manufacturing hegemony appeared to be over.
A loss of $205 million in 1978 led many industry watchers to wonder if Chrysler's rollercoaster finances could rebound from this latest big dip. The syndicate of banks (with Manufacturers Hanover Trust in the vanguard), which for years had been pouring money into Chrysler, panicked. Incredibly, many of the smaller banks had agreed to virtually unlimited lines of credit on the assumption that the company would never need to use them.
However, complex and highly charged negotiations eventually saved Chrysler from bankruptcy. The federal government agreed to guarantee loans up to $1.5 billion, provided Chrysler raised $2 billion on its own. Politicians could not justify such a massive bailout, however, without changes in Chrysler's management. Riccardo, who had diligently fought against heavy odds, had to go.
It was left to the charismatic Lee Iacocca, who took over in 1978, to preside over Chrysler's comeback. An ex-Ford man with a flair for marketing and public relations, Iacocca took Chrysler's problems to the people, explaining that the company's failure would mean the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs and could seriously damage the economy of the state of Michigan. Despite popular mythology and the near-adulation of Iacocca in some quarters, many observers suggested that Riccardo was in large part responsible for forging the agreement that gave Chrysler a new lease on life. In any event, the Chrysler Loan Guarantee Bill passed the U.S. Congress on December 27, 1979 and guaranteed $1.2 billion in loans to Chrysler.
During the early 1980s, Iacocca's skills as a superb television salesman were of crucial importance as Chrysler lost nearly $1.8 billion in 1980--the largest loss ever for a U.S. company--and another $475 million in 1981, before returning to the black in 1982. In August 1983 Chrysler was able to pay off the government loan guarantees seven years early, with the government making a $350 million profit on its investment. Chrysler's road to recovery was a difficult one, demanding the closure of several plants and the reduction of the company's workforce. Once restructured, Chrysler scrapped its plans to diversify and divested the Gulfstream Aerospace unit it had purchased five years earlier, selling it to a New York investment firm for $825 million in early 1990. Two other units in the company's Chrysler Technologies subsidiary--Electrospace Systems and Airborne Systems--were slated for divestiture as well, which underscored Iacocca's intent to create a leaner, more sharply focused company. Meanwhile, there were two key developments in the 1980s that helped form the foundation for the 1990s resurgence: the introduction of the minivan in 1984 and the acquisition three years later of American Motors Corporation and its Jeep brand for $1.2 billion.
Reorganized as such, Chrysler entered the 1990s braced for a full recovery, but the economy did not cooperate. The decline in automotive sales during the fourth quarter of 1989--the company's first fourth quarter decline since 1982--portended a more crippling slump to come, as an economic recession gripped businesses of all types, both domestically and abroad. Net income in 1990 slipped to $68 million, then plunged to a $795 million loss the following year, $411 million of which was attributable to losses incurred by the company's automotive operations. Mired in an economic downturn, Chrysler appeared destined for more of the same, rather than headed toward recovery as Iacocca had hoped, but part of the reason for 1991's losses also led to the company's first step toward genuine recovery.
Partly to blame for the $795 million loss in 1991 were the high preproduction and introduction costs associated with Chrysler's new Jeep Grand Cherokee and increased production costs at the company's St. Louis minivan plant. These two types of vehicles--minivans and sport utility vehicles--represented the key to Chrysler's recovery. The popularity of these vehicles, coupled with significant price advantages over Japanese models, fueled Chrysler's resurgence. In 1992, Chrysler turned its $795 million loss the year before into a $723 million gain. It was a signal achievement, accomplished in Iacocca's last year as CEO. Taking over during 1992 was Robert Eaton, who was hired away from GM, where he was head of European operations. Chrysler then went on to enjoy its most successful year ever, with 1994 earnings of $3.7 billion on revenues of $52.2 billion.
The good news at Chrysler continued into the late 1990s, after the company managed to fend off a $22 billion buyout proposed by billionaire investor Kirk Kerkorian in 1995. The long prosperity and low gasoline prices of the middle to late 1990s created a huge demand for large vehicles, and Chrysler was producing hot models in each of the hottest segments: the Dodge Ram pickup truck; the Town & Country minivan; and several sport utility vehicles--the Jeep Grand Cherokee, the Jeep Wrangler, and the Dodge Durango. Questions about the quality of Chrysler products continued to pop up, but the company's share of the U.S. auto market reached as high as 16.7 percent in 1996, the highest level since 1968. In 1996, the year Chrysler moved into new headquarters in Auburn Hills, Michigan, sales reached $61.4 billion.
The Creation and Early Years of DaimlerChrysler
Daimler-Benz Chief Executive Jürgen Schrempp had concluded as early as 1996 that his company's automotive operations needed a partner to compete in the increasingly globalized marketplace. Chrysler's Eaton was drawing the same conclusion in 1997 based on two factors emerging around the same time: the Asian economic crisis, which was cutting into demand, and worldwide excess auto manufacturing capacity, which was looming and would inevitably lead to industry consolidation. With annual global overcapacity as high as 18.2 million vehicles predicted for the early 21st century, it became clearer that Daimler-Benz and Chrysler could survive as merely regional players if they continued to go it alone.
After several months of negotiations, Daimler-Benz and Chrysler reached a merger agreement in May 1998 to create DaimlerChrysler AG in a $37 billion deal. The deal was consummated in November 1998, forming an auto behemoth with total revenues of $130 billion, factories in 34 countries on four continents, and combined annual unit sales of 4.4 million cars and trucks. The two companies fit well together geographically, Daimler strong in Europe and Chrysler in North America, and in terms of product lines, with Daimler's luxurious and high-quality passenger cars and Chrysler's line of low-production-cost trucks, minivans, and sport utility vehicles. Although this was ostensibly a merger of equals--the company set up co-headquarters in Stuttgart and Auburn Hills, naming Eaton and Schrempp co-chairmen--it soon became clear that the Germans were taking over the Americans. DaimlerChrysler was set up as a German firm for tax and accounting purposes, and the early 2000 departures of Thomas Stallkamp, the initial head of DaimlerChrysler's U.S. operations, and Eaton (who was originally slated to remain until as late as November 2001) left Schrempp in clear command of the company.
DaimlerChrysler AG--the third-largest car maker in the world--is the product of the November 1998 merger of Daimler-Benz AG of Germany and Chrysler Corporation of the United States. Vehicles built by the resultant powerhouse include Mercedes-Benz luxury passenger cars; a microcompact car sold under the name Smart; Chrysler, Jeep, and Dodge cars, pickup trucks, minivans, and sport utility vehicles; and commercial vehicles, including vans, trucks, and buses, under the brand names Mercedes-Benz, Freightliner, Sterling, Setra, and Western Star Trucks. The company's revenue stream is heavily weighted toward the United States and Europe--the Mercedes Car Group and the Chrysler Group divisions account for the majority of company sales. The company has been plagued with problems in recent years related partly to its investment in Mitsubishi Motors. Its troubled Chrysler division experienced a $637 million loss in 2003 due to restructuring costs and slowing U.S. sales. In addition to its vehicle manufacturing operations, DaimlerChrysler is a leading provider of information technology services in Germany and offers a variety of financial services--including vehicle sales and leasing financing, dealer financing, and insurance services--primarily in North America and Europe. The European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), which is 33 percent-owned by DaimlerChrysler, operates as the world's second-largest aerospace and defense company.
Statistics:
Public Company
Incorporated:1998
Employees:362,063
Sales:EUR 136.4 billion ($171.8 billion) (2003)
Stock Exchanges:New York Euronext Paris Frankfurt Tokyo Zurich
Ticker Symbol
CX NAIC:336111 Automobile Manufacturing; 336411 Aircraft Manufacturing; 421110 Automobile and Other Motor Vehicle Wholesalers; 522220 Sales Financing; 532112 Passenger Cars Leasing
Key Dates:
1883: Carl Benz forms Benz & Companies in Mannheim.
1890: Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft is incorporated.
1924: Walter P. Chrysler introduces the Chrysler Six model.
1926: Daimler and Benz are merged to form Daimler-Benz AG, which begins producing cars under the name Mercedes-Benz.
1928: Chrysler acquires Dodge Corporation.
1944: Most of Daimler-Benz's plants are destroyed in Allied bombing raids.
1979: Through passage of the Chrysler Loan Guarantee Bill, the U.S. government guarantees $1.2 billion in loans to Chrysler.
1984: Chrysler introduces the first minivan.
1987: Chrysler acquires American Motors Corporation.
1993: Daimler-Benz becomes the first German firm listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
1995: Jürgen Schrempp takes over as Daimler-Benz's chairman and CEO; company posts losses of nearly $4 billion, the largest in German history.
1998: Daimler-Benz and Chrysler merge to form DaimlerChrysler AG.
2001: Dieter Zetsche launches a major restructuring effort at the Chrysler division.
Address:
Epplestrasse 225
70546 Stuttgart
Germany
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