Group Management Report Products Safety and Health Environment Human Resources Social Commitment Consolidated Financial Statements 51
The planning cycle also has a strategic-planning component,
which combines the analysis of the essential performance
indicators for future business development at the product-
group level with a detailed representation of the changes
expected in the market environment.
From this, strategic measures are derived enabling us
to react to expected developments at an early stage. These
measures, developed in the strategic-planning process, include
not only fields of activity on current sales markets, but
also concrete goals and planning steps for entry into new
fields of business or application areas and changes in the
portfolio of business activities.
The decisions taken within the framework of strategic
planning enter into our subsequent medium-term financial
planning. The latter delineates our growth and profit ability
goals for the coming three years and the effects of the ex-
pected business development on ALTANA’s asset and financ-
ing structure. This is used to derive possible measures for
our financing strategy. Our medium-term financial planning
is supplemented by scenario analyses, which transparently
reflect the sensitivities of the key performance indicators to
relevant, predominantly cyclical changes in the market
environment. From this, we derive levels of reaction for pos-
sible countermeasures.
Business Development
General Business Setting
Overall Economic Situation
In 2017, the global economy developed more dynamically
than in the previous years. The International Monetary
Fund (IMF) estimates that the world economy grew by 3.7 %
last year (previous year: 3.2 %). Again in 2017, the emerg-
ing countries grew more strongly than the established eco-
nomic nations, whose growth increased more significantly,
however. The higher momentum of the advanced economic
nations was primarily driven by the U.S. and the eurozone.
The key economic indicators in the sales regions for ALTANA’s
business developed at different levels in 2017.
At 2.3 %, the eurozone posted stronger growth than in
2016 (1.5 %). The most important European economies
showed a dynamic economic development. The German Fed-
eral Office of Statistics estimates that Germany’s economic
performance improved at a higher rate than in the previous
year, increasing by 2.2 % (previous year: 1.9 %). But other
important economic nations in the eurozone, including France
and Italy, also posted more robust growth.
According to current IMF forecasts, the economic dy-
namics in the countries of the Americas were generally posi-
tive in 2017, after being very heterogeneous in the previ-
ous years. The economic performance of the U.S. accelerated,
growing by 2.3 % in the year under review compared to
1.5 % in the previous year. The economic growth in the important
Latin American economies developed at a low
level, although the recessive trends were reversed in some
countries. The Brazilian economy achieved slight growth
of 1.1 % in 2017, following years of recession (previous year:
- 3.5 %).
Growth in Asia stabilized. The growth rates of the large
emerging economic nations China and India were roughly
on a par with the previous year (6.8 % and 6.7 % compared
to 6.7 % and 7.1 % in 2016) and were the engines of the
very positive economic development in Asia. The countries of