We have set ourselves ambitious goals with our corporate responsibility strategy. Having detailed these in the form of a roadmap, we have already achieved important milestones during the course of 2004 and 2005:

• the institutional cementing of corporate responsibility within the Group as a whole
• the creation of an enterprise-wide database for environmental and personnel-related statistics as a reporting tool
• the formal adoption of a Corporate Responsibility Policy
• the publication of a Code of Conduct for all employees and the establishment of a Corporate Compliance Committee (Glossary).

The implementation of the corporate responsibility measures will further heighten an awareness of these important issues in our workforce. All Linde employees are kept regularly informed about our goals and actions through our internal communication media, such as the international company publication “Linde Today.” A number of projects – which will culminate in the Group-wide networking of areas relevant to corporate responsibility – are currently underway.

Explanations of abbreviations in the graphics:

• BSC = Balanced Scorecard (Glossary)
• CR = Corporate Responsibility
• DJSI = Dow Jones Sustainability Indexes
• HSE = Health, Safety and Enviroment
• HSE-Policy (Glossary) 
• KPI = Key Performance Indicators (Glossary)
• QSE = Quality, Safety and Environment
• Scope 3 (Glossary)