MAN – history, products and organization

Created: 01/29/2022, 19:36

The MAN logo on the facade of an office building © Peter Kneffel / dpa

The vehicle manufacturer MAN has been part of the Traton Group since 2021, which forms part of the VW Group.

Trucks, buses and other commercial vehicles will continue to be sold under the MAN brand.

Brussels – On December 19, 2006, the EU Commission approved MAN's takeover of the Swedish commercial vehicle manufacturer Scania.

Nonetheless, MAN backed out of these plans after Scania's main shareholders, the Wallenberg family and VW, rejected the purchase offer.

At the beginning of 2007, the vehicle manufacturer MAN officially withdrew this bid.

The failure of this company takeover was the beginning of a long-lasting restructuring of the MAN Group.

MAN: The beginnings of the history of the vehicle manufacturer

The history of the vehicle manufacturer MAN goes back to the middle of the 18th century.

MAN emerged from two German predecessor companies, Oberhausener Eisenhütte St. Antony and Sander'sche Maschinenfabrik.

St. Antony was founded in 1758 and at the same time marked the beginning of the mining industry in the Ruhr area. After several changes of ownership and restructuring, St. Antony became the Gutehoffnungshütte in 1873.

Sander'sche Maschinenfabrik was founded in Augsburg in 1840.

It merged with rival companies and was transformed several times before being renamed MAN in 1908.

The company mainly specialized in the following areas:

• mechanical engineering

• bridge construction

• steel construction

MAN: The history of the vehicle manufacturer from the imperial era to the early 1920s

During the founding period, the promotion and trade in oil and oil products, the manufacture of printing machines and the production of diesel engines were added as important business activities.

MAN expanded rapidly under the management of the trained technician Heinrich von Buz, so that the group employed around 12,000 people before the First World War.

1915 was the starting point for the later core business of the vehicle manufacturer MAN: The company entered into a joint venture with the Adolph Saurer automobile works to build trucks.

After several name changes, the new company was called MAN Saurer GmbH, and it moved its production to Nuremberg in 1916.

MAN divested itself of its oil business in 1921.

In the same year, Gutehoffnungshütte took over the MAN Group after it ran into economic and financial difficulties.

This enabled the then Chairman of the Board of Gutehoffnungshütte, Paul Hermann Reusch, to found a large conglomerate that operated both the classic metallurgical industry and modern mechanical engineering and the manufacture of various commercial vehicles.

This group operated under the abbreviation GHH.

MAN: the history of the vehicle manufacturer from the interwar period to the end of the Second World War

The consequences of the First World War in the form of reparations to be paid by Germany and the occupation of the Ruhr area by France placed heavy burdens on the vehicle manufacturer.

Under the Nazi regime, there was renewed growth in sales, as GHH and the later MAN group became an important armaments manufacturer.

During this time he mainly produced the following products:

• tank

• Diesel engines for submarines

• Bullet Cylinder

In contrast, the production of civilian vehicles came to an almost complete standstill in the last years of the Second World War.

MAN's tank production facilities in Nuremberg and Augsburg were bombed several times.

During the war years, the company used a large number of prisoners of war and concentration camp inmates as forced labourers.

MAN: The history of the vehicle manufacturer in the post-war decades

After the end of the Second World War, the victorious powers decided to divest the GHH group.

This led to a detachment of mining.

The company that emerged from this transformation primarily focused on the following businesses:

• Vehicle construction (trucks and buses)

• Manufacture of printing machines

• plant construction

In order for MAN to be able to expand these business areas, various strategic company acquisitions were made in the decades that followed, such as the takeover of parts of the commercial vehicle manufacturer Büssing at the beginning of the 1970s.

Due to the oil crisis and the resulting long-lasting economic crisis in the late 1970s, the vehicle manufacturer suffered a major drop in sales towards the beginning of the 1980s.

Another reorganization should make today's MAN more profitable and more resistant to economic fluctuations.

This restructuring resulted in MAN Aktiengesellschaft with several independent subsidiaries that emerged from former business areas.

MAN: The history of the vehicle manufacturer since German reunification

At the beginning of the new millennium, MAN's plan to take over the Swedish vehicle manufacturer Scania failed.

In the years that followed, VW systematically expanded its shareholdings in MAN in order to gain more influence over the commercial vehicle manufacturer's business.

In May 2009, the legal form changed: MAN became an SE from a German stock corporation.

The abbreviation stands for Societas Europaea and refers to the European stock corporation.

It offers the advantage of maximum flexibility within the European Union in relation to various transactions.

In 2009, following investigations by the Munich public prosecutor's office, it became known that MAN had been involved in a long-standing and extensive corruption scandal: from 2001 to 2007, the group had bribed governments and business partners in a total of 20 countries in order to obtain orders for the delivery of buses and trucks prevail against competitors.

Around 80 million euros have been spent for this purpose.

As a result of the uncovering of these illegal practices, the board of directors of the vehicle manufacturer had to resign.

Numerous managers of the group were tried for corruption and were sentenced to fines or suspended sentences or agreed to a settlement.

MAN: The takeover of the vehicle manufacturer by VW

At the end of May 2011, VW published an offer to take over the shares in MAN SE from the previous shareholders in order to then merge the vehicle manufacturer with the subsidiary Scania.

Through this restructuring, VW intended to gain a stronger position in the international commercial vehicle market.

In November of the same year, VW obtained the majority of the voting rights and share capital of MAN Aktiengesellschaft.

On June 6, 2013, MAN shareholders approved a domination and profit and loss transfer agreement with VW, which granted the Wolfsburg-based group extensive management rights.

MAN: The integration of the vehicle manufacturer into Traton SE

As the majority shareholder, VW decided to combine its various commercial vehicle subsidiaries into a separate group.

VW founded Traton SE for this purpose.

It assumed the function of a holding company, which includes the following vehicle manufacturers in addition to MAN:

• scania

• neoplan

• Rio

• Volkswagen Caminhões e Ônibus

Scania and MAN will continue as independent brands in the Traton Group.

MAN: The board of directors of the vehicle manufacturer

The MAN Group comprises several companies, with MAN Truck & Bus SE being the most important. Alexander Vlaskamp has been the CEO since November 2021.

Under him, the following members of MAN’s Executive Board will assume these responsibilities:

• Michael Kobriger: Production & Logistics

• Göran Nyberg: Sales & Customers Relations

• Arne Puls, Chief Human Resources Officer & Labor Director

• dr

  Frederik Zohm, Research & Development

MAN: The vehicle manufacturer's shares

The VW Group is still the majority shareholder of MAN SE.

The free shares are traded on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Existing shareholders can sell their shares to VW for cash or keep them.

MAN: Divisions and locations of the vehicle manufacturer

The organization of MAN Truck & Bus SE is divided into the following divisions based on the products manufactured and the services offered:

• truck

• vans

• bus

• engines

• Neoplan (Coaches)

• Topused (used vehicles)

• services

The company maintains a large number of locations worldwide at which it produces commercial vehicles.

In addition to the plants in Salzgitter and Nuremberg, these include:

• Kraków

• St. Petersburg

• Pinetown (South Africa)

• Ankara

Over the course of its long history, MAN manufactured many other vehicles.

Among other things, locomotives, trams and agricultural machinery were part of the vehicle manufacturer's production program.