Siemens 2007 Annual Report Download - page 18

18 Letter to our Shareholders
Continental AG is the ideal partner to safeguard the future of our former SV business. Of all the
options that were available to us, this solution was clearly the most profi table – also for you, our
shareholders. In addition, it was a major step – and one much appreciated by our customers – toward
strengthening Germany – and all of Europe – as a center of the worldwide automotive industry.
The acquisition of the U.S. diagnostics company Dade Behring has made us the leading supplier of
in-vitro diagnostics and the world’s fi rst integrated diagnostics company. We’re now the only supplier
to the healthcare industry offering a complete range of products, services and solutions for the entire
clinical value chain.
Regulatory approval by the European Commission in April 2007 was the fi nal step in our acquisition
of the Texas-based software company UGS Corp. Combining UGS expertise with our own technologies
will enable us to bridge the gap between virtual and real-world production in the world’s fi rst intelli-
gent factory (see page 50) and further expand our position as the world leader in automation
systems.
Highest performance with highest ethics
A drive to innovate, an international focus and a sense of responsibility – these are the principles on
which our founder built his company 160 years ago, and they remain the basis for our long-term
success today. With our leading-edge technologies, we’ve achieved worldwide renown. For many of
our competitors, we’re the innovation benchmark.
Now, we’re aiming to be a leader in compliance, too. Restoring confi dence in our Company – this, for
me personally, is the highest priority.
In fi scal 2007, we made a series of major personnel and organizational changes in the legal, compli-
ance and auditing areas. In each of these fi elds, we’re now integrating our processes into a uniform
system worldwide. To support these efforts, we’ve engaged a number of distinguished experts with
international experience.
Effective October 1, 2007, we appointed Peter Y. Solmssen, former Chief Counsel at GE Healthcare,
to fi ll our new Managing Board position for legal and compliance matters. We also appointed Andreas
Pohlmann – previously an Executive Vice President at Celanese Corp. – to serve as Chief Compliance
Offi cer. We combined all the auditing operations at Company headquarters in the unit Corporate
Finance Audit (CFA) within the Corporate Finance Department (CF). Hans Winters, a former partner
at PricewaterhouseCoopers, will head the new unit.
We’ve also made solid progress in implementing compliance-related measures in our operating units.
For example, the face-to-face and online compliance training programs that we’ve established for our
managers worldwide are now far advanced. With clear rules that apply to every employee, we’re
rigorously strengthening awareness of compliance-related issues throughout the Company. We’ve also
set up a central helpdesk (see page 91) to which employees anywhere in the world can direct com-
pliance-related questions concerning, for example, the conduct of day-to-day business activities and
correct behavior with regard to our external partners.