Annual Report 2010 - Knorr-Bremse AG.

14
The State and Development
of Knorr-Bremse AG and the
Knorr-Bremse Group
An overview of the
Knorr-Bremse Group
General economic
developments
The Knorr-Bremse Group is the world‘s leading manufacturer
of braking systems for rail and commercial vehicles.
For more than 100 years now the company has pioneered
the development, production, marketing and servicing of
state-of-the-art braking systems. Other lines of business in
the rail vehicle systems sector include automatic, electropneumatic
or electric door systems, air conditioning systems,
control components and windscreen wiper systems,
as well as platform screen doors. In the commercial vehicle
systems sector, the product range includes complete braking
systems with driver assistance systems, as well as torsional
vibration dampers and powertrain-related solutions
such as the Pneumatic Booster System (PBS) and transmission
control systems for enhanced energy efficiency and
fuel economy.
The structure of the Knorr-Bremse Group is based on the
regions Europe, North America and South America, and
Asia/Australia, and the development of the Group is geared
to meeting the specific requirements of the markets and
customers in these regions.
This regional organizational structure is designed to offer
globally active customers uniform technical platforms
worldwide, while at the same time taking specific local
needs into account. It also ensures that customers who operate
on a regional basis are supplied with globally proven
systems and components.
The negative economic background conditions caused by
the global economic and financial crisis that dominated
2008 and 2009 improved in 2010 and a relatively robust if
regionally different real-market recovery set in.
The emerging economies of Asia continued to drive the
recovery. The relative contributions to growth of the
emerging and industrialized nations showed the same
marked divergent progression as they had during the crisis.
In 2010, average growth among the emerging nations
was 7.1%, while the industrialized nations posted just 3.0%
growth on average. Global figures are expected to show
overall economic growth of around 5.0% (2009: minus
0.6%).
As the global markets recovered, the economic performance
of the Eurozone also stabilized in 2010. Following a
4.1% decline in 2009, economic output rose 1.8% in 2010.
With GDP growth of 3.6% (2008: minus 4.7%) which was
above average for the region, Germany made a substantial
contribution to ensuring greater stability. As an exportoriented
economy, Germany was initially harder hit by the
collapse of global trade, but then benefitted more strongly
from its recovery in 2010 than other Eurozone countries.
With commodity prices firming up, Russia too with its
marked dependency on energy exports saw GDP rise 3.7%
(2009: minus 7.9%).