The Liebherr family business was established in 1949 by Hans Liebherr. The great success of his first mobile, easy-to-assemble and affordable tower crane was the foundation on which the company flourished. International economic development in 2011 was rather more moderate than in the previous year. Total production worldwide went up by 3.8 %. In this second year following the financial and economic crisis, the significant growth stimuli once again came from the emerging markets.