The Board of Management would like to thank all staff for their dedicated and successful efforts in the financial year just-ended. The Board of Management thanks the Group Employee Council for its close and constructive cooperation, especially in connection with the HDI/Gerling integration.

Integration of HDI and Gerling completed

The organizational aspects of the integration of the HDI-Gerling companies were completed as planned in 2008. Following on from the successful conclusion of integration activities in the Life Group and in the asset management sector in the previous year, the synergies envisaged for the HDI-Gerling Property & Casualty Group were achieved to a level in excess of 95 % by the end of the year under review.

Almost all the necessary personnel relocations have also been completed. Altogether, more than 5,000 job transfers were carried out as part of the integration; the bulk of them occurred within the same political municipality and related largely to the merging of branches and business offices. More than 1,000 employees moved to a new city: mainly those from the former life insurance locations in Hamburg and Wiesbaden who moved to Cologne, those from the property/casualty offices in Cologne who came to Hannover, and the staff in asset management who transferred from Hannover to Cologne.

Our people thus displayed enormous flexibility. Not only that, the implementation of the restructuring activities and the strained working environment inevitably imposed by the integration placed a special burden on them. It is thus all the more commendable that they successfully coped with the demands of business. The Board of Management therefore extends its special gratitude to the staff affected by the integration for their very high level of dedication and gratifying achievements in 2008.

The measures described above were carried out on the basis of the settlements of interest concluded with the Group Employee Council. In the course of 2008 settlements of interest were reached for more than 6,000 employees on the property/casualty insurance side. They encompassed the reorganization of all central and localized functions in industrial, commercial and private as well as direct insurance together with the restructuring of the sales organization.

All measures were cushioned by the social compensation plan agreed in 2007, which provides inter alia for generous compensatory payments and assistance benefits in the event of relocations.