Dürr Annual General Assembly approves dividend increase to Euro 1.10

05/30/2001

• Peak value for dividend yield
• Resolution on stock options initiative passed
• Less dependence on cyclical fluctuations thanks to new strategy
• Necessary measures have been put in place for voting at the Annual General Assembly with electronic media

The Annual General Assembly of Dürr Aktiengesell-schaft, Stuttgart, has today approved a dividend of Euro 1.10 (+10 %; previous year Euro 1). As foreign Group companies have made the highest contribution to earnings, there is no tax credit for shareholders in Germany who are enti-tled to a tax deduction. With a dividend yield of 4.6 % (year's end 2000) Dürr holds a top position amongst German joint stock companies.The shareholders' representatives voted for Joachim Schielke (member of the Board of Management of the Landesbank Baden-Württemberg (LBBW)) to suc-ceed Werner Schmidt (former Chairman of the Board of LBBW) to the Supervi-sory Board of Dürr AG. As the number of staff in German Dürr companies has increased due to acquisitions, six employees' representatives will belong to the Supervisory Board of Dürr AG after today's constituent meeting for the first time. The representatives elected by the staff are Peter Weingart, Liselotte Dedek-Fried, Werner Kramp and Peter Krüger. Trade union representatives in the body are Günter Lorenz and Benno Eberl.

The Annual General Meeting has approved the acquisition of treasury stock up to max. 7 percent of equity and the creation of qualified capital by issuing up to 1 million common shares to service a stock options initiative for managerial staff (DISOP: Dürr International Stock Options Plan). DISOP consists of a combination of stocks and stock options (ratio 1 : 2.5) offered for purchase. About 150 senior executives of the Dürr Group worldwide are entitled to take part in DISOP that will run over a total period of five years, and that depends on the achievement of set goals.

For the first time main parts of the Dürr Annual General Meeting were transmitted live on the Internet. The participants of the meeting approved an alteration of the bylaws allowing necessary measures to be taken for the introduction of electronic media, for instance for the participation in votes i the Annual General Meeting.

In the past fiscal year 2000, the Dürr Technological Group saw an increase in sales of 67 % to Euro 2,042 m (previous year Euro 1,224 m). EBITDA rose by about 83 % to Euro 119.8 m (previous year Euro 65.4 m).

Dürr got started into the first quarter of the current fiscal year with a high order backlog and continuing growth in sales. Given the background of a cooler global economic climate, growth of incoming orders may be slower than assumed for the figures planned at the beginning of the year. Stagnating or declining sales figures are viewed in essential automobile markets. In the USA, for instance, therefore single projects have been postponed. Nevertheless, Dürr is expecting to achieve double-digit growth rates in sales and earnings with more than propor-tionate growth in earnings. Reasons for this are synergy effects resulting from acquisitions, programs introduced for increasing earnings, and the new strategy thanks to which Dürr is benefiting from the various capital investments to be real-ized at different times in various steps of the value chain in automobile manufac-turing.

For example, manufacturing support services and the extension of the engineer-ing portfolio for manufacturing processes and facilities help to compensate for cyclical effects. Due to the increasing diversity of variants, shorter model cycles, growing quality standards and the pressure to significantly increase productivity that can only be achieved with innovative manufacturing concepts, there is grow-ing demand for such services.

In order to participate in the growth market engineering, a company called DS Engineering GmbH (DSE) has been established, in which Dürr and Schenck can pool and evolve their specific planning capabilities - ranging from concepts for individual manufacturing steps through to detail planning of complete automotive plants.

The Dürr Technological Group is one of the world's leading suppliers of produc-tion systems and manufacturing support systems to the automotive industry and its component suppliers. The six business units Paint Systems, Automotion, Envi-ronmental, Ecoclean, Services and INTX and the Carl Schenck Group are organ-ized under the aegis of Dürr AG, the strategic management holding company, and they are represented with operations in over 25 countries worldwide.