Daimler Financial plans consolidation at Alliance

Daimler Financial Services Americas hopes for a smooth ride as it moves from several locations throughout the nation to one central location in Allaince Texas.

The company plans to move 750 people to a new three-story, 160,000-square-foot office building. The company is combining operations from its Mercedes-Benz Financial business with the Daimler Truck Financial business. Daimler has a total loan portfolio of $31 billion.

“We had to make a decision how do we create and how do we position ourselves for the future related to our operations,” said Klaus Entenmann, president and CEO of Daimler Financial, of the split of Daimler-Chrysler Financial Services in 2007. “We made a decision to concentrate all the operations including customer service, collections, including dealer credit – to concentrate all these operational parts of our business and increase the footprint we have in the Fort Worth area.”

Hillwood Properties began work on the office building in mid-January.

“We’re targeting an August completion so we’ve got people working overtime and extra quick to have everybody [from out of town] moved into the facility by the school year,” said Steven Aldrich, Hillwood vice president.

Although the new facility will not be finished, Daimler plans to move its current Customer Service, Collections and Remarketing operation of the Mercedes-Benz Financial business unit, currently in Westlake, into a temporary building in Solana office development in March, Entenmann said. Currently, the 440 employees share an office building with Chrysler financial.

Once the building is finished the company will move employees from Daimler Truck Financial in Lisle, Ill., a suburb of Chicago, and close that location. The Illinois operation currently has about 300 employees; Entenmann said he assumes 50 percent or less will make the move. In early December the company twice chartered planes to bring employees and their families to check out the area.

“We watched the forecast and when the weather was very nice in Fort Worth and the weather was very bad in Chicago we made a trip down here,” Entenmann said.

Daimler will also move people from its New Jersey, Detroit and Jacksonville, Fla., operations, Entenmann said. When all employees from outside of Texas are settled, which should take about six weeks, the Westlake employees will move from the temporary Solana offices to the new location in Fort Worth, he said.

“This facility, along with the [Heritage Common II] building, represents a real change along the I-35 corridor,” said Mike Berry, president of Hillwood Properties. “We are seeing a lot more office, service related companies and industries locating here… for housing availability, the quality of the workforce, the accessibility, at least in the intra-market area, to the housing – I won’t necessarily talk about trying to go from here to downtown Fort Worth.”