Ergo profit to increase about 90 percent by 2012, Munich Re

Munich Re plans to almost double profit at its primary insurance unit over the next five years by cutting costs and recapturing lost market share.

Photo: Ergo profit to increase about 90 percent by 2012, Munich Re

Ergo profit to increase about 90 percent by 2012, Munich Re

Ergo Versicherungsgruppe “is to post a normalized profit” of more than 900 million euros ($1.3 billion) by 2012, an increase of about 90 percent from 2006, the Munich-based reinsurer said in an e-mailed statement today, Bloomberg reports.

Munich Re AG, in German Münchener Rück AG is the world's second largest reinsurance company with over 5,000 customers in 160 countries and has its headquarters in Munich, Germany.

Munich Re was founded in 1880 by Carl Thieme, who also founded the Allianz insurance company, Germany's largest insurance company. Munich Re is the name as used by the company, short for the legal name Munich Reinsurance Company, or in German Münchener Rückversicherungs-Gesellschaft.

The quick and unbureaucratic handling of claims after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake was the beginning of Munich Re's path to becoming the world's largest reinsurer. Munich Re was one of the major insurers of the World Trade Centre in New York City that was destroyed on 11 September 2001.

Nikolaus von Bomhard told an investor conference in London monitored over the Internet that he expected primary insurance to grow faster than reinsurance and that the group's ERGO insurance unit was a "cornerstone" of the group, Reuters reports.

Founded in 1997, the ERGO Versicherungsgruppe AG is the strategic Management Holding of the ERGO group with headquarters based in Düsseldorf

The Holding overtakes leading functions in Germany and abroad for several central and cross-section departments - i.e. Accountig, Company Organisation, Controlling, Finance, IT and Sales Coordination

Largest shareholder is Munich Re holding 94.7 % of the ERGO shares

Source: agencies