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Member, Beacon International Group, Ltd.
COLOGNE, Germany The historic Gerling insurance group no longer exists. On Monday, Gerling Konzern Allgemeine A.G., the main non-life operating company of the Cologne-based family held insurance group, was formerly merged with HDI Industrie Versicherung A.G. in Hanover to create HDI-Gerling Industrie Versicherung A.G., based in Hanover.
At the same time a new holding company called HDI-Gerling Sach Serviceholding A.G. was created. Both the holding company and the main industrial insurance company are led by Chief Executive Officer Christian Hinsch.
The holding company is 100% owned by parent Talanx Group, also based in Hanover. Talanx is also the majority shareholder of Hannover Re Group.
Tuesday and Wednesday saw the formal creation of three more legal entities under the new holding company's control. These are HDI-Gerling Firmen und Private Versicherung A.G., the group's main smaller commercial and personal lines operation, HDI Direkt Versicherung A.G., its direct personal lines operation, and HDI-Gerling International Holding A.G. The latter is directly managed by Mr. Hinsch while the former two operations will be run by former GKA executive Wofgang Breuer.
This completes a lengthy and complex takeover process that commenced back in May 2006 when Talanx bought the ailing Gerling business.
The life business was swiftly merged early last year but the non-life business took longer because the Gerling family did not own all the shares. Talanx therefore had to carry out a squeeze-out of the remaining shares.
HDI says that the combined non-life group boasts premium income of about €6.7 billion ($9.47 billion) based on 2006 figures of which about €4 billion ($5.6 billion) is derived from its core German market.
This makes HDI-Gerling the second largest German nonlife insurance group behind Allianz S.E. by premium income.