Major winter sports events are lined up worldwide. As growing numbers of cities and regions get in shape for world-class winter events, experts estimate that over €15 billion will be invested in new and existing infrastructure in winter sports areas by 2020. Organizers are increasingly considering environmental aspects in their planning. “Our solutions make us the ideal partner for winter sports areas. We support them with the management of major projects, including providing our expertise for sustainable urban development as well as our green technologies for the ski slopes,” said Siemens President and CEO Peter Löscher.
Siemens is off to a good start in the new fiscal year 2011. The company expects a strong increase in new orders in the first quarter of the year, compared to the comparable period in fiscal 2010. Revenue will also probably increase substantially year-over-year. Income from continuing operations in the first quarter is expected to exceed the prior-year level. “We’re off to a good start and are fully on track to reach our targets,” stated Siemens CFO Joe Kaeser at an investor conference in New York on Monday.
For the 15th time, Siemens – together with Friedrich Alexander University (FAU) in Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany – is hosting a special technology conference, the Erlanger Technikgespräch, in the Siemens medicare building in Erlangen, Germany. Climate change, diminishing natural resources, increasing urbanization, rising prosperity and the related increase in energy demand require a new approach to the way energy is handled. The German government has set the course with its new energy concept. Plans call for reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050, compared to 1990 levels, while increasing the amount of power generated from renewable sources by the same percentage. Today, 16 percent of Germany’s energy requirements are met by renewable energies. “We won’t reach our climate goals,” emphasized Siemens President and CEO Peter Löscher, “unless we make electricity our all-encompassing energy carrier. In the future, electricity will also be used in fields where other energy carriers now dominate – in transportation, for example. We’re on the threshold of a new electric age.” And precisely here, added Löscher, is where Siemens, with its Environmental Portfolio, can make a decisive contribution – from renewable energies to electric mobility.
Atos Origin and Siemens announce their intention to form a global strategic partnership. Siemens will contribute its Siemens IT Solutions and Services for a total sum of €850 million to Atos Origin in order to create a European IT champion. Siemens will become for a period of at least five years a sustainable shareholder of Atos Origin with a 15% stake. The transaction will create a leading IT services company with pro forma 2010 revenues of approximately €8.7billion and 78,500 employees worldwide. As part of the transaction, Siemens concluded a seven-year outsourcing contract worth around €5.5 billion, under which Atos Origin will provide Managed Services and Systems Integration to Siemens. The new company will operate the largest European managed services platform, will be uniquely positioned to deliver cloud computing services, market leading System Integration solutions such as Consolidation & Harmonization, Energy, PLM and to enhance significantly its electronic payments and transaction based activities.
Siemens AG today announced the first anti-corruption projects that will receive financing from the US$100 million integrity initiative to promote clean markets. This initiative is part of the World Bank-Siemens AG comprehensive settlement that was agreed on July 2, 2009. An initial tranche of US$40 million will now be distributed to more than 30 initiatives from over 20 countries that have been selected. Around 300 nonprofit organizations from 66 countries had applied for funding during the first round.
Siemens has received authorization from Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority (BaFin) to engage in banking operations. The Siemens Bank GmbH will support sales at the company’s three operating Sectors – Industry, Energy and Healthcare – by expanding, with loans and guarantees, the product portfolio of Siemens’ financial services unit in the area of sales financing, in particular. Through deposit banking activities, the bank will also increase the flexibility of Siemens’ internal financing operations and optimize risk management. Future customers are expected to include primarily businesses, public authorities and project companies. The new bank will not offer products for private individuals. The Siemens Bank will be headquartered in Munich, Germany, and begin operations shortly.
Siemens has the best knowledge management in Europe: The Company emerged on top in a field of 41 competitors for this year’s “The European Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE)” ranking. “An important step to increase Siemens' innovation power and capability is to extend the R&D network across all departmental boundaries and to include external partners into our innovation value chain. Therefore at Siemens, the days of closed doors in the labs are over. Winning the MAKE Award is a great success and proves that Siemens is among the top performers in knowledge creation and management worldwide", says Prof. Hermann Requardt, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG and responsible for Siemens’ central research unit Corporate Technology and for the Siemens Healthcare Sector. This marks the eighth time since 2001 that Siemens has been among the best finalists in this study, which is conducted annually by the UK-based consulting firm Teleos. And Siemens is also among the top 20 companies in the worldwide ranking. The Siemens light-subsidiary Osram also was honored: On December 2, within the Handelsblatt-conference “Open Innovation” Osram received the 2010 Best Open Innovator Award in the “corporate division” category.
Red Bull Racing and Sebastian Vettel became double World Champions in 2010 winning the Constructors and Drivers championships. Red Bull Racing develops and manufactures its championship winning car using Siemens’ software for Product Lifecycle Management (PLM). The software forms the highly efficient digital backbone of the manufacturing process and enables new components to be designed at high speed on the computer, sent into production seconds later by a mouse click and then built into the vehicle. This speeds up development and improves lap times. “Siemens PLM software plays an important role within the company feeding data from our design engineers to our manufacturing facilities. This contribution should not be underestimated,” said Christian Horner, Team Principal of the Red Bull Racing team. In addition, Siemens is now reducing the energy consumption and CO2 emissions of the team’s factory buildings and production systems in Milton Keynes, England – making Red Bull Racing a pioneer in the racing world.