Mercedes-Benz to close Michigan financial services office and move 400 jobs
Jamie L. LaReau, Detroit Free Press
5 min read
Mercedes-Benz is moving some 500 corporate and technical jobs from various locations across the nation — including 400 from Michigan — to the Atlanta area over the next 18 months to establish the Georgia region as its North America headquarters.
The automaker, which is based in Stuttgart, Germany, made the announcement on May 22, adding that it will also make "a multimillion dollar" investment in a new state-of-the-art research and development hub in the Atlanta area.
As a result of these moves, Mercedes-Benz is shuttering its Financial Services headquarters in Farmington Hills. A corporate real estate team will find a new tenant for that building, Melinda Mernovage, a Mercedes-Benz Financial Services spokeswoman, told the Detroit Free Press.
Mercedes-Benz Financial Services offices in Farmington, Hills.
"There will be 400 corporate roles that are leaving Michigan. On the research and development side, we are maintaining 180 roles in Michigan," Mernovage said in an email to the Detroit Free Press. She did not say where in Michigan those jobs would be located. "That number will grow to up to 200 total technical roles in Michigan for Mercedes-Benz. The roles leaving Michigan are not layoffs, and all employees will have the opportunity to transfer to the Atlanta headquarters."
She did not provide the total number of employees currently at the Farmington Hills location, but a 2022 company news release said 700 people worked out of that facility at that time.
According to the Mercedes-Benz USA website, the Atlanta-area headquarters is responsible for the distribution, marketing and customer service for all Mercedes-Benz products in the United States. Mercedes-Benz USA, the U.S. sales and marketing arm, directly employs 1,800 people.
In a statement, Mercedes-Benz North America CEO Jason Hoff thanked the state of Georgia for "its support" and said this move demonstrates the automaker's commitment to succeeding in the United States.
"This strengthens our position for continued growth and reinforces our established commitment to the U.S. market," Hoff said. "Bringing our teams closer together will enable us to be more agile, increase speed to market and ensure the best customer experience.”
A move in the making
The Farmington Hills facility is a new state-of-the-art building that opened in 2022, according to the company. It is a three-story, 200,000-square-foot building on 12 Mile Road, about 1 mile from the Mercedes-Benz Financial Services' previous headquarters. The company has been in Michigan for about 25 years, Mernovage said.
In a news release announcing the opening of the new facility, dated Sept. 27, 2022, the company wrote, "the new headquarters supports over 700 team members from (Mercedes-Benz Financial Services) and Mercedes-Benz North America Corporation, each working a flexible, hybrid-model split between work-from-office and work-from-home hours each week."
Mercedes-Benz completed construction on the new three-story, 200,000-square-foot Mercedes-Benz Financial Services headquarters building on 12 Mile Road in 2022.
The new office provided a variety of workspaces along with swanky amenities such as a fitness center, coffee bar Benz Beanz and a restaurant called Star Café, open daily for breakfast and lunch, the media release said.
Despite all that ritz, the discussion of a possible move from Michigan has been in the works since last fall, two sources told the Free Press at that time. These people are not being named because they are not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. But at the time, the sources said, that after the COVID-19 pandemic, employees were not using the new office to full capacity as they continued to work mostly remote. That prompted Mercedes-Benz leadership to reconsider its North American footprint.
The automaker has many smaller locations across the country besides those in Georgia.
On social media earlier this year, a person who indicated they worked for Mercedes-Benz Financial Services in Farmington Hills posted that the company had told them it was "closing shop" in Michigan and moving to Atlanta.
Atlanta's access to talent
Mercedes-Benz said it opened its facility in Atlanta in 2018 and it currently has about 800 employees.
In its news release, the luxury automaker said this latest move is part of a broader strategy to improve product quality and customer experience. It said its financial services teams and corporate functions, which are based in Farmington Hills now, will be "co-located with current sales teams in Sandy Springs, Georgia," which is about 10 miles north of Atlanta.
Technical teams from various U.S. locations will move to a research and development hub near Sandy Springs, it said. Mernovage said, "the details of the new R&D hub are still being scoped out, so further information about the future facility and total investment will be shared at a later date."
The automaker called this move a "strategic investment in the Atlanta region" that allows it to recruit engineering talent from Georgia Institute of Technology and work with the region’s thriving startups and technology firms.
The news comes just weeks after Mercedes-Benz, which sold 374,000 vehicles in the United States last year, announced it will add production of the GLC SUV to its assembly plant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The company builds vans at its plant in Charleston, South Carolina. Mercedes-Benz in total directly employs 11,100 people across the United States, around 8,000 of which are in manufacturing.
