Europcar creates Nordic Regional Cluster

Europcar creates Nordic Regional Cluster 1

PARIS: Europcar Mobility Group announced the creation of a Nordic Cluster across Europcar Mobility Group businesses in Denmark, Finland and Norway, which will be led by Stéphane Soille, appointed as its Managing Director.

Stéphane Soille will be supported by a Country Head for each of the three markets, with a strong commercial focus: Christian Øien for Denmark, Kimmo Vainio for Finland and Bjørn Briskeby for Norway.

For Denmark the business was acquired in April 2017, and since that time Christian Ree continued with the business to manage the transition from long-standing franchisee to a high performing corporate country. Christian Ree has now left the Group to fully dedicate his time to his family businesses.

The franchises of Finland and Norway were acquired by the Group in February 2019, from Jussi and Matti Holopainen. Both Jussi and Matti stayed with the business to manage the smooth transition into a corporate country, producing excellent results through the integration.

Jussi and Matti Holopainen have also now left the Group to focus on their other business interests.

These three businesses hold strong positions in their respective national markets (N°1 in Denmark, N°1 in Finland and N°3 in Norway) with customer bases covering both leisure travelers and the corporate market.

Indeed, the customer experience has always been one of the key areas of performance of these businesses, especially for Denmark and Finland which hold the two highest customer satisfaction ratings across the Group, year after year (in 2020: Net Promoter Score of 67,1 for Denmark and 70,4 for Finland).

The creation of a Nordic Cluster is part of the Group’s ongoing business transformation, and will allow the optimisation of business processes across the three countries – by leveraging best practices and mutualizing expertise locally – as well as accelerate the integration of the region into the Group.

Building on the solidity of these businesses and the recognised customer focus of the local teams, the Group particularly intends to use this regional cluster as an innovation and launch platform for its new offers and new mobility services.

Gary Smith, Managing Director, Northern Europe and USA, comments: “Today, the Group is able to make this change, thanks to the successful acquisition and integration allowed by the former owners of these businesses. We would like to thank Christian, Jussi and Matti for the drive and commitment to the Group and wish them every success in their new ventures.

The three businesses have a very strong service culture and are well positioned to grow on the B2B segment with tailor-made, innovative mobility solutions: the recent partnership sealed with Post Nord and Mercedes-Benz in Denmark, to provide full electric vans with a long-term solution that includes connectivity and data management, is the perfect illustration of the innovative offers that these teams are able to build for B2B customers, in line with Group’s strategy.

They are also well positioned to benefit from the tourist market when the world will re-open, while offering new proximity mobility services for the domestic market. With this new organisation, in the framework of the Group’s “Connect” plan, we are preparing this region for the market rebound”.

Europcar Mobility Group is a major player in mobility markets and listed on Euronext Paris. Europcar Mobility Group operates through a diversified portfolio of brands meeting every customer specific needs and use cases, be it for 1 hour, 1 day, 1 week or longer ; its 4 major brands being: Europcar – the European leader of car rental and light commercial vehicle rental, Goldcar – the low-cost car-rental Leader in Europe, InterRent – ‘mid-tier’ car rental and Ubeeqo – one of the European leaders of round-trip car-sharing (BtoB, BtoC). www.europcar-mobility-group.com

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