Corporate Objectives

Optimizing Portfolio
Optimizing our portfolio is an ongoing process. Our present business portfolio will therefore have to be adapted continuously to reflect changing conditions.

Market leadership
85% of our core operations rank among the top three in their segment worldwide. We aim to raise this to nearly 100% while upholding our good credit profile and striving to achieve our target returns. Acquisitions are considered where this cannot be achieved through organic growth or that would take too long.

Sustained profitable growth
We intend to step up utilization of in-house opportunities for growth. Our goal is still to report organic growth of 5% p.a. Research and development and fostering innovation are therefore keystones of our strategy of sustained growth. We expect growth to be concentrated mainly on Asia, especially China, and on Latin America and Eastern Europe.

Ambitious return targets
We have set ambitious yet realistic mid-term return targets for our core businesses:

Our WACC (cost of capital) currently is 9% (before taxes).