Siemens held its Annual Shareholders' Meeting at the Olympia Hall in Munich on January 27, 2009. We compiled all press material for the meeting on this website.
Interest in the Annual Shareholders’ Meeting of Siemens AG continues unabated in 2009. Some 24,000 shareholders have ordered tickets for the event in Munich’s Olympiahalle. About 11,000 shareholders ordered tickets online via the Internet. Some 63,000 registered to receive meeting documents electronically. By way of comparison: in 2008, roughly 26,000 shareholders ordered tickets and over 12,000 came to the Olympiahalle. The 9,500 shareholders attending represented more than 45 percent of Siemens AG’s capital stock.
“With great relief, a dark chapter in Siemens’ history has been systematically and successfully addressed,” said Gerhard Cromme, Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Siemens AG, at the company’s Annual Shareholders’ Meeting. Around two years after the start of investigations, the legal proceedings connected with the bribery allegations against the company in Germany and the U.S. have now come to an end. “We would like to express our deep regret that there has been unacceptable misconduct at Siemens in the past. We have done everything in our power to clarify what happened and to identify and correct the causes of misconduct,” added Cromme. “Today, Siemens has a clear, transparent structure with no gray zones of responsibility. At the same time, the company is more efficient, more cost-effective and thus more competitive. Siemens’ internal control mechanisms are among the best in the world. After two difficult years, Siemens once again stands on a firm foundation of integrity. Building on this foundation, we can now move forward,” he said.
As contractually specified, Siemens AG will terminate the Shareholders Agreement for the Franco-German joint venture Areva NP S.A.S., specified effective latest January 30, 2012, and sell its entire stake to the majority shareholder Areva S.A. under the terms of a put agreement. Siemens stated its lack of exercising entrepreneurial influence within the joint venture as the reason behind the move. The transaction is subject to the approval of antitrust authorities. The purchase price for the shares to be transferred will be agreed upon by the contractual parties in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Shareholders Agreement. In 2001, Siemens combined its nuclear business activities with those of the French company Framatome and has since then held a minority share (34 percent) in the joint venture Areva NP (formerly Framatome ANP).
Interest in the Annual Shareholders’ Meeting of Siemens AG continues unabated in 2009. Some 24,000 shareholders have ordered tickets for tomorrow’s event in Munich’s Olympiahalle. About 11,000 shareholders ordered tickets online via the Internet. Some 63,000 registered to receive meeting documents electronically. By way of comparison: in 2008, roughly 26,000 shareholders ordered tickets and over 12,000 came to the Olympiahalle.
Siemens AG announced today that legal proceedings against it arising from allegations of bribing public officials were concluded on the same day in Munich and in Washington, DC. Siemens will pay total fines and penalties of about €1 billion.