Heiko A. Nitsche, president and CEO of Mercedes-Benz Group Services Phils., Inc., said Mercedes-Benz, the premium brand of Daimler, is extending its operations here starting next year.
"We are planning to extend our operations. We are currently a global back-up center based in Cebu which we started about five years ago and now we are planning to extend our operations in the Philippines here in Clark,” Nitsche said at the sidelines of the PLDT/Smart launching of its high-speed internet connectivity services at the Clark International Airport here last Friday.
“We are currently in discussions with CDC (Clark Development Corp.) and looking into different opportunities where we can locate. And probably next year, we will come to Clark,” he added.
“We will start small just like we started small in Cebu but we now have about 300 plus headcount (employees),” he said.
Nitsche described the Mercedes-Benz services center as “focused” and “it’s a captive service center for finance and accounting that’s why majority of my workforce are CPAs (certified public accountants),” he added.
“We will also start here in Clark small and then expand step by step with about 50 employees in the fi rst year and 100 workers in the following year and continue to increase,” he explained.
The employees will be hired locally, he said. The Mercedes-Benz services group is like a BPO (business process outsourcing) but for internal services just like what JP Morgan, Shell and Deutsch Bank do in Manila, he pointed out.
However, Nitsche declined to comment on how much the company will be investing here. “I don’t have the business plan approved that’s why we cannot comment on that yet,” he explained.
Mercedes-Benz is the premium brand of Daimler Group which is the 17th largest company in the world and hires about 284,000 employees worldwide, Nitsche said.
“I was the one who set-up shop in the Philippines in Cebu five years ago,” he said.
Mercedes – Benz Group Services Phils., Inc., is a Shared Service Center providing shared services and consulting to the Mercedes-Benz sales organizations in the Asia Pacific Region as well as support the already established Shared Service Center in Madrid, Spain.
The entity is envisioned to provide stateof-the-art Financial Administration, Accounting, and Consultancy services for all Daimler Group subsidiaries represented in the whole Asia Pacifi c region, North America as well as back-offi ce support for its offi ces in Europe.
