2011 Annual Report - OTCIQ.com
2011 Annual Report - OTCIQ.com
2011 Annual Report - OTCIQ.com
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The Supervisory Board has established policies and procedures<br />
for itself. It holds four regular meetings in each financial year.<br />
Its policies and procedures include mechanisms by which, if<br />
necessary, a meeting of the Supervisory Board can be called<br />
at any time by a member or by the Board of Management. In<br />
the event of a tie vote on the Supervisory Board, another<br />
vote is held; if there is still a tie, the Chairperson casts the<br />
tie-breaking vote.<br />
In view of Item 5.4.1 of the Code, in December 2010 the Supervisory<br />
Board defined targets for its <strong>com</strong>position that go<br />
beyond the applicable legal requirements. These targets are<br />
as follows:<br />
“The Supervisory Board’s <strong>com</strong>position should ensure that, on<br />
balance, its members have the necessary expertise, skills, and<br />
professional experience to discharge their duties properly. Each<br />
Supervisory Board member should have or acquire the minimum<br />
expertise and skills needed to be able to understand and<br />
assess on his or her own all the business transactions that<br />
may occur. The Supervisory Board should include a sufficient<br />
number of independent candidates; members are deemed<br />
independent if they do not have any business relationship with<br />
the Company or its Board of Management that constitutes a<br />
conflict of interest. The Supervisory Board should not include<br />
more than two former members of the Board of Management,<br />
and members of the Supervisory Board must not sit on the<br />
boards of, or act as consultants for, any of the Company’s major<br />
<strong>com</strong>petitors.<br />
Each Supervisory Board member must have sufficient time<br />
available to perform his or her duties on the boards of various<br />
E.ON <strong>com</strong>panies. Persons who are members of the board of<br />
management of a listed <strong>com</strong>pany shall therefore only be eligible<br />
as members of E.ON’s Supervisory Board if they do not<br />
sit on more than three supervisory boards of listed non-Group<br />
<strong>com</strong>panies or in <strong>com</strong>parable supervisory bodies of non-Group<br />
<strong>com</strong>panies.<br />
As a general rule, Supervisory Board members should not be<br />
older than 70.<br />
The key role of the Supervisory Board is to oversee and advise<br />
the Board of Management. Consequently, a majority of the<br />
shareholder representatives on the Supervisory Board should<br />
have experience as members of the board of management<br />
of a stock corporation or of a <strong>com</strong>parable <strong>com</strong>pany or association<br />
in order to discharge their duties in a qualified manner.<br />
CEO Letter<br />
E.ON Stock<br />
Combined Group Management <strong>Report</strong><br />
Consolidated Financial Statements<br />
Corporate Governance <strong>Report</strong><br />
Supervisory Board and Board of Management<br />
Tables and Explanations<br />
In addition, the Supervisory Board as a whole should have<br />
particular expertise in the energy sector and the E.ON Group’s<br />
business operations. Such expertise includes knowledge<br />
about the key markets in which the E.ON Group operates. Furthermore,<br />
the internal and external stakeholder groups (shareholders/investors,<br />
employees/unions, society/government) should<br />
be represented in the Supervisory Board.<br />
If the qualifications of several candidates for the Supervisory<br />
Board meet, to an equal degree, the general and <strong>com</strong>panyrelated<br />
requirements, the Supervisory Board intends to consider<br />
other criteria in its nomination of candidates in order to<br />
increase the Supervisory Board’s diversity.<br />
In view of the E.ON Group’s international orientation, the Supervisory<br />
Board should include a sufficient number of members<br />
who have spent, at a minimum, a significant part of their professional<br />
career abroad.<br />
In addition, the Supervisory Board aims to continually increase<br />
the number of women in the Supervisory Board. Currently, one<br />
shareholder representative and one employee representative<br />
are women. The Supervisory Board aims to double this number<br />
at the latest at its next regular election, which takes place in<br />
2013. It aims for 30 percent of Supervisory Board members to be<br />
women as of the regular election after that; this reflects the<br />
percentage of women employees in the E.ON Group.”<br />
These targets for the Supervisory Board’s <strong>com</strong>position were<br />
taken into consideration for the first time by the Nomination<br />
Committee and the full Supervisory Board’s re<strong>com</strong>mendations<br />
for the election of three shareholder representative<br />
Super visory Board members at the <strong>2011</strong> <strong>Annual</strong> Shareholders<br />
Meeting. The <strong>Annual</strong> Shareholders Meeting elected, by a<br />
large majority, the re<strong>com</strong>mended candidates: Baroness Denise<br />
Kingsmill, Bård Mikkelsen, and René Obermann. Baroness<br />
Denise Kingsmill’s membership on the United Kingdom’s Monopolies<br />
and Mergers Commission and her many successful<br />
years as an attorney give her extensive knowledge of energy<br />
markets and their <strong>com</strong>petitive and regulatory environment as<br />
well as broad political experience. René Obermann has<br />
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