Like many global economies, Siemens AG, Europe's largest engineering company and a bellwether for its broader economy, is counting on higher growth from emerging markets to compensate for more lackluster growth in Europe. Siemens is also in line for exploring and developing a rare earth mine in Mongolia.

While Siemens posted more robust quarterly results than other European Industrial heavyweights in recent weeks, the German company sounded another note of caution about the cloudy outlook for the growth prospects of the euro zone and beyond. The conglomerate manufactures products from high-speed trains to medical-imaging equipment to steam turbines, making it a barometer for wide swaths of the global economy.

“It's clear that the global economy is moving at two speeds,” said Chief Executive Peter Löscher, pointing to growth forecasts for industrial countries of just 1.4 percent in 2012. One major factor for Siemens is Germany, where economists expect growth to significantly decrease slow next year, depriving Europe of its primary growth engine.

Other European industrial companies have been bleaker in their outlook. French power-management and engineering company Schneider Electric SA recently cut its profit margin target, citing a slump in Western Europe and inflationary pressures in emerging markets. Late last month, Swiss engineering giant ABB warned amid weaker-than-expected quarterly results that Europe's debt crisis and its potential impact on the global economy made it tough to forecast near-term growth.

Amid the cautious outlook for next year, Siemens plans to increase its 2012 dividend by 11 percent to EUR 3 (USD 4.08) a share, but that amount still falls short of analysts' expectations of a higher dividend. In its fiscal fourth quarter ended 30 September, Siemens swung to a new profit of EUD 1.17 billion. Charges that included a write-down of more than EUR 1 billion on its diagnostics business last year pushed Siemens to a EUR 467 million loss in the quarter a year earlier.