Limited Assurance Report of the Independent Auditor regarding the Combined Separate Non-Financial Report1

To the Executive Board of Wacker Chemie Aktiengesellschaft, Munich

We have performed an independent limited assurance engagement on the Combined Separate Non-Financial Report of Wacker Chemie Aktiengesellschaft, Munich and the Group (hereinafter “WACKER”) as well as the following parts, qualified by reference, “Group Business Fundamentals”, “Further Information on R&D, Employees, Procurement, Production, Sales and Marketing” and “Risk Management Report” of the Combined Management Report (hereinafter “Report”) according to Sections 315b and 315c in conjunction with 289b to 289e German Commercial Code (HGB) for the business year from January 1 to December 31, 2018.

Management’s Responsibility

The legal representatives of WACKER are responsible for the preparation of the Report in accordance with Sections 315b and 315c in conjunction with 289b to 289e HGB.

This responsibility of the legal representatives includes the selection and application of appropriate methods to prepare the Report and the use of assumptions and estimates for individual sustainability disclosures which are reasonable under the given circumstances. Furthermore, this responsibility includes designing, implementing and maintaining systems and processes relevant for the preparation of the Report in a way that is free of – intended or unintended – material misstatements.

Independence and Quality Assurance on the Part of the Auditing Firm

We are independent from the entity in accordance with the requirements of independence and quality assurance set out in legal provisions and professional pronouncements and have fulfilled our additional professional obligations in accordance with these requirements.

Our audit firm applies the national statutory provisions and professional pronouncements for quality assurance, in particular the professional code for German Public Auditors and Chartered Accountants (in Germany) and the quality assurance standard of the German Institute of Public Auditors (Institut der Wirtschaftsprüfer, IDW) regarding quality assurance requirements in audit practice (IDW QS 1).

Practitioner’s Responsibility

Our responsibility is to express a conclusion on the Report based on our work performed within our limited assurance engagement.

We conducted our work in accordance with the International Standard on Assurance Engagements (ISAE) 3000 (Revised): “Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information” published by IAASB. This Standard requires that we plan and perform the assurance engagement to obtain limited assurance of whether any matters have come to our attention that cause us to believe that the Report for the period from January 1 to December 31, 2018, has not been prepared, in all material respects in accordance with Sections 315b and 315c in conjunction with 289b to 289e HGB. We do not, however, provide a separate conclusion for each disclosure. In a limited assurance engagement the evidence gathering procedures are more limited than in a reasonable assurance engagement and therefore significantly less assurance is obtained than in a reasonable assurance engagement. The choice of audit procedures is subject to the auditor’s own judgement.

Within the scope of our engagement, we performed amongst others the following procedures:

  • Inquiries of personnel on the corporate level who are responsible for the materiality analysis to get an understanding of the process for identifying material topics and respective report boundaries for WACKER
  • A risk analysis, including a media search, of relevant information about the sustainability performance of WACKER in the reporting period
  • Evaluation of the design and implementation of systems and processes for the collection, processing and monitoring of information on environmental, employee and social matters, respect for human rights, and combating corruption and bribery, including data consolidation
  • Inquiries of personnel on the corporate level who are responsible for the collection of the information on concepts, due diligence processes, results and risks, the conduction of internal controls and the information consolidation
  • Evaluation of selected internal and external documents
  • Analytical evaluation of data and trends of quantitative information which are reported by all sites on the corporate level
  • Evaluation of local data collection and reporting processes and reliability of reported data via a sampling survey in Nünchritz (Germany)
  • Assessment of the overall presentation of the information

Conclusion

Based on the procedures performed and the evidence obtained, nothing has come to our attention that causes us to believe that the Report of WACKER for the business year from January 1 to December 31, 2018 is not prepared, in all material respects, in accordance with Sections 315b and 315c in conjunction with 289b to 289e HGB.

Restriction of Use / Clause on General Engagement Terms

This report is issued for the purposes of the Executive Board of Wacker Chemie Aktiengesellschaft, Munich only. We assume no responsibility with regard to any third parties.

Our assignment for the Executive Board of Wacker Chemie Aktiengesellschaft, Munich, and professional liability is governed by the General Engagement Terms for Wirtschaftsprüfer and Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften (Allgemeine Auftragsbedingungen für Wirtschaftsprüfer und Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften) in the version dated January 1, 2017 (https://www.kpmg.de/bescheinigungen/lib/aab_english.pdf). By reading and using the information contained in this report, each recipient confirms having taken note of provisions of the General Engagement Terms (including the limitation of our liability for negligence to EUR 4 million as stipulated in No. 9) and accepts the validity of the above-mentioned General Engagement Terms with respect to us.

Munich, March 5, 2019

KPMG AG
Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft

Original German version signed by:

Hanshen
Wirtschaftsprüfer
[German Public Auditor]

Hell

1 Our engagement applied to the German version of the Report 2018. This text is a translation of the Independent Assurance Report issued in the German, whereas the German text is authoritative.

todo Vorjahresvergleich