Basel, Switzerland, 25 April 2017 – Today's Annual General Meeting of Lonza Group Ltd, led by the Chairperson of the Board of Directors, Rolf Soiron, was attended by 235 shareholders. They represented 59.96% of the share capital.
The Board members standing for re-election (Rolf Soiron, Patrick Aebischer, Werner Bauer, Jean-Daniel Gerber, Christoph Mäder, Barbara Richmond, Margot Scheltema, Juergen Steinemann and Antonio Trius) were all elected for a further term in office of one year. Thomas Ebeling did not stand for re-election. The shareholders also elected Albert M. Baehny as a new member of the Board. The Annual General Meeting re-elected Rolf Soiron as Chairperson of the Board of Directors for a further term in office of one year, as well as the three acting members of the Nomination and Compensation Committee.
The shareholders strongly supported all other motions proposed by the Board of Directors, including among others the remuneration report and the binding votes on the compensation for the Board of Directors and the Executive Committee.
A dividend of CHF 2.75 per share, as proposed by the Board of Directors and accepted by the shareholders, will be paid out from 3 May 2017.
The shareholders also supported the increase of the share capital by the issuance of up to 22,000,000 fully paid registered shares to raise gross proceeds in the amount of approximately CHF 2.3 billion by way of a rights offering, the reintroduction of authorized capital in the amount of CHF 7,500,000, and an increase of the existing conditional capital from currently CHF 5,029,860 to CHF 7,500,000.
For further information, please see the short-form minutes of the Lonza Annual General Meeting under the following link (select “Annual General Meeting 2017”).