Efficiency-enhancement Programme

Our efficiency-enhancement programme is on schedule. It envisages measures to reduce costs and increase revenue, aiming to gradually lift annual earnings by a total of € 1.2 billion by the end of 2012. The reference year is 2006. One of the goals we are pursuing with the project is to enhance the performance of our German electricity and gas grid business, which should at least partially compensate for the effect of the tariff cuts mandated by the network regulator. Further savings are to be achieved through improvements in IT services and purchasing as well as the pooling of back-office functions. Moreover, we intend to increase revenue by improving the technical availability of our power plants. We achieved an accumulated earnings contribution of € 200 million in the 2007/2008 period through the efficiency-enhancement programme and intend to raise this figure to € 450 million by the end of 2009.