The world's leading specialty chemicals company said that no operational redundancies are planned in connection with the organisational changes and the new management structure will come into effect from January 1, 2006.
In future the >Degussa Management Board will take on a significantly more operational role. The business units will report in future directly to the Management Board.
"Degussa is thereby reinforcing its basic principle of a de-centralised corporate structure, and as a result accelerating its decision-making processes and further increasing its flexibility in the market," said a company statement.
"Going forward, we are now leaner in the global specialty chemicals markets. This lays the foundation on which we can implement our performance enhancement program, Degussa 2008, that will enable us to achieve our demanding profitability and growth targets for the long term," said Prof. Utz-Hellmuth Felcht, management board chairman of Degussa.
Starting 2006, Degussa's external reporting will be done on the basis of four reporting segments, namely Technology Specialties, Construction Chemicals, Consumer Solutions and Specialty Materials.
The Corporate Center will now take on a stronger leadership role in the group, to support the Management Board in its management duties.
The services that operate globally will in future report directly to the individual Management Board Member responsible, while all other services will report to the appropriate Corporate Center units. This will reduce the number of interfaces and achieve more efficient management of the services, said the company.
Moreover, Degussa is streamlining its international organisation. Seven regions (North America, South America, Western Europe, Eastern Europe, India, China, Japan) will in future be represented by Regional Heads, who will report directly to the Management Board Members. The other countries will be assigned to the business units that have the strongest sales locally.
Looking to the future Degussa will focus even more on sustained profitable growth. Important core growth areas in the portfolio include anorganic specialties, special applications for coatings and adhesives, solutions for the cosmetics industry and high-performance plastics. Over the next few months the Degussa Management Board will determine priorities and the specific action needed to implement this growth strategy.