Hamburg/Kirkel - February 1, 2007. Effective today, Max Bahr has become part of the Praktiker Group. After obtaining clearance for the takeover from the Federal Cartel Office on January 10, 2007, the corresponding transfer agreements have now been signed on Wednesday, January 31. At the same time, a new management took over at Max Bahr: Andreas Mauz (39) and Lutz Rucktäschel (41), two experienced managers from Praktiker are now leading the long-established Hamburg-based company. In addition to his function as chairman of the Management Board, Mauz will be responsible for category management, marketing, finance, IT and logistics, while Rucktäschel will mainly focus on sales. Peter Sumfleth, former Managing Director of Max Bahr, retired from the company as planned.

On the first day after the merger to the Praktiker Group, a clear signal for the continuation of the Hamburg operations was set: Max Bahr will not only manage its own brand, but it will also be allocated central responsibility for logistics and quality assurance for the entire Praktiker Group.

Wolfgang Werner, CEO of Praktiker Bau- und Heimwerkermärkte Holding AG, is convinced that this move will create the basis for a “successful further development of the company and the brand Max Bahr“. The integration of Max Bahr will now be pursued “quickly but with good measure and sensibility”. The objective is to purposefully advance the profile of the brand Max Bahr as a service-oriented premium supplier with the competence of running a wide assortment of DIY products. “To this effect we need the know-how and experience from the employees of Max Bahr, whom we warmly welcome in our Group”, said Werner. “There is a lot we can learn from each other to grow even stronger together than each of us had been before“. The two-brand strategy that has now been made possible provides the Praktiker Group with a unique market position in the German DIY sector.

In the context of the integration process, the complete organization of the Max Bahr head office will be restructured and closely interlocked with that of the Praktiker Group. As a result, numerous central functions will be merged, in particular in administration, finance and purchasing. Some units will continue to operate at two locations but with a new structure, some will be combined at the head office of the Praktiker Group in Kirkel, and yet others will be pooled in Hamburg like logistics and quality assurance. This way, the well-developed resources of Max Bahr can be used to the benefit of the entire German business of the Praktiker Group and extended further, where applicable. “This way we can leverage synergies that will render our consolidated operations even more efficient, effective and thus more competitive“, stressed Werner.

This notwithstanding, the structural changes will also lead to a certain capacity and workforce reduction at the Max Bahr head office. According to present plans, around two thirds of the existing jobs will be retained. In relation to the total workforce of Max Bahr, the planned redundancies at the head office amount to less than four percent.

Negotiations are under way with the employee representatives of Max Bahr to ensure that the redundancies at the head office are handled in a socially acceptable way. Those employees, whose positions will be shifted to the head office of the Praktiker Group, are to be offered a job in Kirkel.

The new Managing Directors: Andreas Mauz and Lutz Rucktäschel

The new Management Board of Max Bahr is made up by two DIY experts who held prominent positions in purchasing and sales in the Praktiker Group before.

Andreas Mauz, born on 23 March 1967 in Esslingen/Neckar, graduated from the Stuttgart University of Cooperative Education in business management and has been with Praktiker since 1996. He quickly distinguished himself as a purchaser for machines and machine accessories and was promoted to head of section for the complete technology line in the central category management function. Mauz was granted procuration in 2002 and assumed the responsibility for the complete group logistics and hence also for Praktiker’s central warehouse in 2004. Since 2006, he also holds the position of Managing Director of KIG Import GmbH, a subsidiary of Praktiker Services Holding GmbH responsible for international purchasing. Lutz Rucktäschel was born on 8 January 1966 in Remscheid. He graduated as an economist at the Wuppertal Polytechnic. His professional career started in 1994 at a former Spar DIY center in Lüneburg, where he was soon appointed as store manager and remained in this position also after the takeover by Praktiker in 1996. Following further positions as store manager in Wentorf and district manager for Northern Germany, Rucktäschel in April 2004 was granted procuration and appointed head of the sales region East, which includes Schleswig-Holstein and the metropolitan area of Hamburg. In early 2006, he took over the management of the region West, which covers large parts of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia.