Mercedes 1999 Annual Report Download - page 13

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CHAIRMEN’S LETTER
7
We drove and will drive the consolidation process in the
world-wide automotive industrie, we will seek further
world-wide growth in the automotive business and lead this
development into the future.
At the end of the day, our job as leaders is to anticipate the
future and to make it happen to the best advantage of you,
the shareholder. We are doing that by concentrating the
considerable resources of this company in support of our
automotive-, our non-automotive divisions and our services.
We are leveraging our leadership in research and techno-
logy, by finding the world’s best people and giving rein to
their knowledge and their genius for style, by nurturing our
tradition of engineering excellence, expanding our global
marketing reach, and optimizing our business portfolio, our
financial muscle and our purchasing power.
We have seen the future … and it is us.
Robert J. Eaton Jürgen E. Schrempp
Principally, of course, our business is to build the world’s
best cars and trucks, to support the people who buy them
with the world’s best automotive services, and to build the
best internal processes in the industry. In the final analysis,
technology remains a means to an end, not an end in itself.
But it is the people of DaimlerChrysler who will make the
difference – their energy, inventiveness, dedication and
professionalism, and sheer passion for what they do. Our
strategy is to retain, recruit and develop people with
outstanding skills and attitudes, all around the world,
through benchmark human resources management. More
than two thirds of our employees share in our profits, either
through stock ownership or performance-related bonuses.
Very few large companies have achieved that level of profit
participation. Perhaps that’s why we have one of the lowest
staff turnovers in our industry and are rated as one of the
world’s most attractive employers. It also goes to the heart
of our entrepreneurial ethic.
The integration has given our management new strength.
We have learned to cope with cultural differences. We
can make decisions faster, we are exchanging ideas faster,
and we have greater flexibility now when it comes to
making mergers and alliances work across national and
regional borders.
The key to all this is globalization. Profitably expanding our
operations around the world will enable us to leverage our
technological advantage more profitably across a widening
base of sales, and use our purchasing power across a
widening supply chain, making it the best and most cost-
efficient in the world. Part of globalization is our deep
concern for the people and regions we work and produce at.
We are a good corporate citizen wherever we operate.