ots Ad hoc-Service: Drägerwerk AG <DE0005550636>
Lübeck (ots Ad hoc-Service) -
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Dräger accelerates restructuring and cost abatement program in Medical Technology / Nonrecurring expenses from action package incl. Dräger ProTech of around Euro 45 million / Hence a group net loss of Euro 60 million for 2000 / Group pretax operating result almost at breakeven / Dräger intends to bounce back into the black in 2001
With the aim of achieving a much improved group performance in the current fiscal year 2001, Drägerwerk AG had significantly stepped up its Medical Technology and Dräger ProTech GmbH restructuring and cost-abatement programs during the fourth quarter of 2000. Last October, corporate management had already announced that these restructuring efforts would lead to an eight-digit DM loss for the first time in the company's history. The measures now initiated and broadened are raising the restructuring expenditure for 2000 to a total of Euro 45 million, thus entailing an appreciable increase in the group's net loss to Euro 60 million for the past fiscal year.
The radical surgery includes the convergence of business units and sales territories, the jettisoning of unprofitable businesses (such as the construction of hospital containers), the reduction of warehousing costs and inventory levels, and the remolding of Dräger ProTech GmbH. Works council negotiations are being intensified on the subject of personnel retrenchments without undue hardship for the some 650 employees affected throughout the group. Instated are meantime more than 300 individual productivity enhancement measures some of which are beginning to bear fruit.
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Original content of: Drägerwerk AG & Co. KGaA, transmitted by news aktuell