Merbag: Austrians trust Swiss

With 27 locations in Switzerland, six in Italy and five in Luxembourg, and a total of around 2200 employees, the Merbag Group is one of the largest car dealers in Switzerland.

Largest employer in the industry
The Group, which specializes in passenger cars and commercial vehicles of the Mercedes-Benz, Smart and Fuso brands, is one of the three largest employers in the Swiss automotive industry.

Merbag Group takes care of trade, maintenance, repair, rebuilding and trade-in, up to financial mediation.

Fits the corporate culture
Now Merbag is expanding eastward and buying the Austrian business of Mercedes dealer Wiesenthal.

Wiesenthal Managing Director Henrik Starup-Hansen: "With the Swiss company Merbag, we have succeeded in finding a buyer whose long and traditional history makes it a perfect fit for Wiesenthal's corporate culture in Austria."

Sensible expansion through purchase
The deal continues the international expansion policy of Merbag, which was founded in 1912 and is owned by the Stüber family.

Karin Stüber: "The purchase enables us to expand our company in a meaningful way. We assume that we will be able to successively expand the very good market position on the Viennese market in the coming years."

Merbag will take over all 538 employees working in Austria. The deal is scheduled to close in June 2020, Merbag explained, but still needs to be approved by the Competition Commission.

Movement at Mercedes dealers
So there is currently a lot of movement among Mercedes dealers in Europe and Switzerland, because it had already become known in September that the German Fahrzeug-Werke Lueg AG was taking over six Merbag locations at the request of Daimler.

And in November it became public that Groupe RCM is buying Ring Garage AG Chur from Mercedes-Benz Schweiz AG. As of January 1, 2020, the French car dealer has thus become the official Mercedes-Benz dealer in Switzerland.

agvs-upsa.ch