CELANESE CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES NOTES TO CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS — (Continued) ?
designate subsidiaries as unrestricted subsidiaries; and ?
sell certain assets or merge with or into other companies.
Subject to certain exceptions, the indentures governing the senior subordinated notes and the senior discount notes permit the issuers of the notes and their restricted subsidiaries to incur additional indebtedness, including secured indebtedness.
In addition, the senior credit facilities require BCP Crystal to maintain the following financial covenants: a maximum total leverage ratio, a maximum bank debt leverage ratio, a minimum interest coverage ratio and maximum capital expenditures limitation.
The maximum consolidated net bank debt to Adjusted EBITDA ratio, as defined, previously required under the senior credit facilities, was eliminated when the Company amended the facilities in January 2005.
As of December 31, 2006, the Company was in compliance with all of the financial covenants related to its debt agreements.
Principal payments scheduled to be made on the Company’s debt, including short term borrowings, is as follows:
## Table 0 ##
(1) Includes $2 million purchase accounting adjustment to assumed debt.17.
Benefit Obligations Pension obligations.
Pension obligations are established for benefits payable in the form of retirement, disability and surviving dependent pensions.
The benefits offered vary according to the legal, fiscal and economic conditions of each country.
The commitments result from participation in defined contribution and defined benefit plans, primarily in the U. S.  Benefits are dependent on years of service and the employee’s compensation.
Supplemental retirement benefits provided to certain employees are non-qualified for U. S.  tax purposes.
Separate trusts have been established for some non-qualified plans.
The Company sponsors defined benefit pension plans in North America, Europe and Asia.
As of December 31, 2006, the Company’s U. S.  qualified pension plan represented greater than 84% and 76% of Celanese’s pension plan assets and liabilities, respectively.
Independent trusts or insurance companies administer the majority of these plans.
Pension costs under the Company’s retirement plans are actuarially determined.
The Company sponsors various defined contribution plans in North America, Europe, and Asia covering certain employees.
Employees may contribute to these plans and the Company will match these contributions in varying amounts.
The Company’s matching contribution to the defined contribution plans are based on specified percentages of employee contributions and aggregated $11 million, $12 million, $8 million and $3 million for the years ended December 31, 2006 and 2005, the nine months ended December 31, 2004 and the three months ended March 31, 2004, respectively.
CELANESE CORPORATION AND SUBSIDIARIES NOTES TO CONSOLIDATED FINANCIAL STATEMENTS — (Continued) Fair Value of Financial Instruments Summarized below are the carrying values and estimated fair values of financial instruments as of December 31, 2006 and 2005, respectively.
For these purposes, the fair value of a financial instrument is the amount at which the instrument could be exchanged in a current transaction between willing parties.
## Table 1 ##
At December 31, 2006 and 2005, the fair values of cash and cash equivalents, receivables, notes payable, trade payables, short-term debt and the current installments of long-term debt approximate carrying values due to the short-term nature of these instruments.
These items have been excluded from the table.
Additionally, certain longterm receivables, principally insurance recoverables, are carried at net realizable value (See Note 25).
Included in other assets are long-term marketable securities classified as available-for-sale.
In general, the cost investments included in the table above are not publicly traded and their fair values are not readily determinable; however, the Company believes that the carrying value approximates or is less than the fair value.
The fair value of long-term debt and debt-related financial instruments is estimated based upon the respective implied forward rates as of December 31, 2006 and 2005, as well as quotations from investment bankers and on current rates of debt for similar type instruments.25.
Commitments and Contingencies The Company is involved in a number of legal proceedings, lawsuits and claims incidental to the normal conduct of business, relating to such matters as product liability, antitrust, past waste disposal practices and release of chemicals into the environment.
While it is impossible at this time to determine with certainty the ultimate outcome of these proceedings, lawsuits and claims, the Company believes, based on the advice of legal counsel, that adequate provisions have been made and that the ultimate outcomes will not have a material adverse effect on the financial position of the Company, but may have a material adverse effect on the results of operations or cash flows in any given accounting period.
Plumbing Actions CNA Holdings, Inc.  (“CNA Holdings”), a U. S.  subsidiary of the Company, which included the U. S.  business now conducted by the Ticona segment, along with Shell Oil Company (“Shell”), E. I.  DuPont de Nemours and Company (“DuPont”) and others, has been a defendant in a series of lawsuits, including a number of class actions, alleging that plastics manufactured by these companies that were utilized in the production of plumbing systems for residential property were defective or caused such plumbing systems to fail.
Based on, among other things, the findings of outside experts and the successful use of Ticona’s acetal copolymer in similar applications, CNA Holdings does not believe Ticona’s acetal copolymer was defective or caused the plumbing systems to fail.
In many cases
Business Lines Acetate tow is used primarily in cigarette filters.
According to the 2006 Stanford Research Institute International Chemical Economics Handbook, we are the world’s leading producer of acetate tow, including production of our ventures in Asia.
We produce acetate flake by processing wood pulp with acetic anhydride.
We purchase wood pulp that is made from reforested trees from major suppliers and produce acetic anhydride internally.
The acetate flake is then further processed into acetate fiber in the form of a tow band.
We have an approximate 30% interest in three manufacturing ventures in China that produce cellulose acetate flake and tow.
Our partner in each of the ventures is a Chinese state-owned tobacco entity.
In addition, 12% of our 2006 acetate tow sales were sold directly to China, the largest single market for acetate tow in the world.
Two of the ventures completed tow expansions in January 2005, and the third venture completed its tow expansion in June 2005.
Flake expansion is expected to be completed in 2007.
Although our direct tow sales into China have decreased as a result of the venture expansions, the future dividends that we expect to receive from these ventures are projected to increase.
Acetate Products is continuing its productivity and operations improvement efforts.
These efforts are directed toward reducing costs while achieving higher productivity of employees and equipment.
In addition to our operating sites’ restructuring activities previously undertaken, we closed our Charlotte, North Carolina administrative and research and development facility.
In July 2005, we relocated our Rock Hill, South Carolina administrative functions to our Dallas corporate headquarters.
In December 2005, we sold our Rock Hill and Charlotte sites.
Facilities Acetate Products has production sites in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Belgium, and participates in three manufacturing ventures in China.
In October 2004, we announced plans to discontinue our filament business, with operations at our Narrows, Virginia and Ocotlan, Mexico sites, which occurred in the fourth quarter of 2005.
Additionally, we announced our intentions to shutdown our high cost operations at our Rock Hill, South Carolina flake production site and our Edmonton, Alberta, Canada flake and tow production site.
We shutdown our Rock Hill flake and Edmonton tow operations in the second quarter of 2005 and will shutdown our Edmonton flake facility in early 2007.
In addition to the above closures, we re-commissioned our flake operations at Ocotlan in the first quarter of 2005.
Markets The following table illustrates the destination of the net sales of Acetate Products by geographic region of the Successor for the years ended December 31, 2006 and 2005 and the nine months ended December 31, 2004 and of the Predecessor for the three months ended March 31, 2004.
Net Sales to External Customers by Destination — Acetate Products
## Table 2 ##

<table><tr><td></td><td>Total  (In $ millions)</td></tr><tr><td>2007</td><td>309</td></tr><tr><td>2008</td><td>25</td></tr><tr><td>2009</td><td>50</td></tr><tr><td>2010</td><td>39</td></tr><tr><td>2011</td><td>1,485</td></tr><tr><td>Thereafter-1</td><td>1,590</td></tr><tr><td>Total</td><td>3,498</td></tr></table>
<table><tr><td></td><td colspan="4">Successor</td></tr><tr><td></td><td colspan="2">As of December 31, 2006</td><td colspan="2">As of December 31, 2005</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Carrying</td><td>Fair</td><td>Carrying</td><td>Fair</td></tr><tr><td></td><td>Amount</td><td>Value</td><td>Amount</td><td>Value</td></tr><tr><td></td><td colspan="4">(In $ millions)</td></tr><tr><td>Cost investments</td><td>193</td><td>193</td><td>220</td><td>220</td></tr><tr><td>Marketable securities</td><td>265</td><td>265</td><td>280</td><td>280</td></tr><tr><td>Insurance contracts in Rabbi Trusts</td><td>72</td><td>72</td><td>75</td><td>75</td></tr><tr><td>Long-term debt</td><td>3,189</td><td>3,359</td><td>3,282</td><td>3,452</td></tr><tr><td>Cross currency swap</td><td>-37</td><td>-37</td><td>-4</td><td>-4</td></tr><tr><td>Interest rate swap</td><td>3</td><td>3</td><td>1</td><td>1</td></tr><tr><td>Foreign currency forward contracts</td><td>-5</td><td>-5</td><td>3</td><td>3</td></tr></table>
<table><tr><td></td><td colspan="6"> Successor</td><td colspan="2" rowspan="2" Predecessor  Three Months   Ended   March 31,   2004></td></tr><tr><td></td><td colspan="2"> Year Ended   December 31,   2006</td><td colspan="2"> Year Ended   December 31,   2005</td><td colspan="2"> Nine Months   Ended   December 31,   2004</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td> % of </td><td></td><td> % of </td><td></td><td> % of </td><td></td><td> % of </td></tr><tr><td></td><td> $</td><td> Segment</td><td> $</td><td> Segment</td><td> $</td><td> Segment</td><td> $</td><td> Segment</td></tr><tr><td></td><td></td><td></td><td></td><td colspan="2"> (In millions)</td><td></td><td></td><td></td></tr><tr><td>North America</td><td>73</td><td>42%</td><td>58</td><td>32%</td><td>52</td><td>40%</td><td>19</td><td>43%</td></tr><tr><td>Europe/Africa</td><td>64</td><td>36%</td><td>80</td><td>44%</td><td>49</td><td>37%</td><td>17</td><td>39%</td></tr><tr><td>Asia/Australia</td><td>25</td><td>14%</td><td>30</td><td>17%</td><td>21</td><td>16%</td><td>6</td><td>14%</td></tr><tr><td>Rest of World</td><td>14</td><td>8%</td><td>12</td><td>7%</td><td>9</td><td>7%</td><td>2</td><td>4%</td></tr></table>

Question: What will North America reach in 2007 if it continues to grow at its current rate?