Dürr responds to economic downturn by streamlining structures

12/07/2001

After coming into force of the new german regulations relating to mergers and takeovers, Dürr AG plans to acquire 100% of the Carl Schenck AG shares (squeeze-out), in a move to simplify company law-related activities within the Dürr Group.

In order to put a clearer focus on the main clientele, the automobile and automotive component suppliers industry, and to take advantage of synergies, Dürr will merge its business units from seven to five and will match their product portfolios to the requirements of the market.

The Automotion business unit, which will be renamed to Final Assembly Systems, will be focused on planning, construction and installation of turnkey final assembly systems.

The Measuring Systems business unit will in future also include products and services related to research and development of vehicles, and hence will encompass all measuring technology activities of Carl Schenck AG.

The Environmental business unit, which supplies environmental equipment for paint finishing systems and other branches, will be integrated as a product line within the Dürr Paint Systems business unit. In future, the INTX business unit, which currently holds shares in technology companies Netcoach and Fludicon, will be anchored within Dürr AG as the corporate department, Corporate Venture Capital.

To reflect the new organizational structures, responsibilities in the Board of Management were realigned as follows: Dr. Reinhold Grau: Paint Systems, Frank Haun: Measuring Systems and Ecoclean, Dr. Norbert Klapper: Final Assembly Systems and Services. The responsibilities of Dr. Wolfgang Baur: Finance, Human Resources, IT and of Hans Dieter Pötsch, Chairman of the Board of Management, remain unchanged. This was approved by the Supervisory Board at its meeting on December 6.

For the current fiscal year, Dürr no longer expects sales and earnings growth to reach the double-digit percentage levels previously planned. Due to the weakness of the world economy and the consequences of the terrorist attacks, the willingness to invest has further declined in many branches of industry in recent weeks. The consequent increase in competition and pressure on margins has resulted in more modest earnings, and this concerns Schenck in particular, but also the US Environmental operation.

Dürr is implementing these measures to attain its goal of securing the Group's earnings power, in spite of the far more difficult market conditions currently prevailing. Orders on hand at the end of the fiscal year will leave Dürr's capacities well utilized until far into the first half of the year 2002. Against this backdrop, Dürr expects business development to be characterized by high level consolidation.