Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject Business economics - Business Management, Corporate Governance, grade: 70 %, Prifysgol Cymru University of Wales, language: English, abstract: Germany is one of the leading car manufacturer industries in the world. The German automotive market convinces customer preferences around the world with companies like Volkswagen, BMW or Daimler, as confirmed by export rates of 190 billion euro through vehicles and components in 2012 (Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2013). The Bavarian automobile manufacturer BMW is one of these highly regarded and ven-erated automobile brands. The enterprise BMW Group assert their top position in the premium segment with a new record in global sales of about 2.1 million automobiles in 2014. The additional brand MINI could hold the level of its sales from the previous year and, for the first time, Rolls Royce Motor Cars was able to increase the sales over 4.000 units in 2014, and thus assert the position as the market leader in the absolute luxury segment. Hawranek (2008) and Reithofer, chief executive of BMW, (BMW Group, 2015) emphasise that the company remain faithful to its strategy to continuously hold the position as the world's top seller in the premium class. The elaboration will present an environmental analysis of the BMW Group in the automotive industry with help of the principles of a PESTEL-Analysis. After a general over-view of the automotive industry in the 21st century in chapter 2, each point of the PESTEL-analysis will be processed separately in chapter 3. The conclusion in chapter 4 in-cludes the results, an overall assessment of the BMW Group and recommendations considering the focus of the business strategy.