To this end, the Board of Directors adopted the following measures on 27 November 2015:

In the Power Quality product area, part of the ELCOM/EMS division, whose core business is the manufacture and marketing of instrument transformers, transformers and chokes for a wide range of performance classes, the Group is to integrate a number of entities established or acquired in recent years. Bringing together smaller companies and production facilities in a central production and administration building in the Cologne/Aachen area will allow the Group to leverage synergies more effectively. As part of the Wijdeven integration, production capacity in North Africa will also be adapted. A new investor is being sought for a further two smaller sites. In addition, slightly reduced market expectations in this product area will result in a goodwill impairment.

For the Electronic Assembly Production product area, a strategic investor will be sought to enable the entity to achieve growth and better economies of scale in future. However, Phoenix Mecano will retain a shareholding in this area owing to its importance as an internal supplier for the business as a whole.

In the Enclosures division, the Obergünzburg site in Germany will be closed, with the aim of further streamlining membrane keyboard production processes and making full and optimal use of the investments in production capacity at the cost-effective facility in Kecskemét, Hungary.

These measures will generate special costs of approximately €15 million, which will be charged to the 2015 financial statements. Only around €3 million of this will affect the cash position; the remainder will be impairments of intangible and tangible assets and inventories.

In subsequent years, the measures will result in substantial cost savings in the region of an estimated €3 million per year.

For 2015, the Group still aims to achieve an operating result before special costs at least equivalent to that of the prior year. For 2016, the Board of Directors expects the measures adopted to lead to a significant improvement in Group result and a break-even in EBIT for the ELCOM/EMS division.