19.05.2021
Erste Group’s Annual General Meeting resolves a dividend of EUR 0.50 per share for the financial year 2020
- Michael Schuster newly appointed as a member of the Supervisory Board
- AGM grants discharge to the members of the Management and Supervisory Boards
The main items on the agenda at the 28th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Erste Group Bank AG included the amount of the dividend, an election to the Supervisory Board, as well as the approval of the reports and activities of the Management Board and the Supervisory Board.
Held entirely online for a second consecutive year due to the Corona crisis, today’s AGM for Erste Group saw 99.91% of shareholders approve the Management Board’s proposal to distribute an adjusted dividend of EUR 0.50 per share. The dividend payout takes into account the European Central Bank’s recommendation on limiting dividend distributions during the Covid-19 pandemic. This payment is scheduled for 27 May 2021 and is subject to withholding tax. The Management Board informed shareholders that a reserve of EUR 1 per share has been established. Should the ECB lift its recommendation on the dividend restriction in the second half of 2021, then Erste Group envisages distributing this amount as well.
The AGM granted discharge for the reports and activities of the Management Board members with a vote of 99.99%. Likewise, the reports and activities of the Supervisory Board members were approved with a vote of 93.98%.
Shareholders approved the election of Michael Schuster (the founder and general partner of Speedinvest) as a new member of the Supervisory Board. Schuster fills the position made vacant on the Supervisory Board by the expiry of the term of its member John James Stack, who was no longer available for re-election due to having reached the statutory age limit.
The newly constituted Supervisory Board is (when taking into consideration only capital representatives) composed of four women and eight women, thus complying with the minimum proportionality requirement established by the Austrian Stock Corporation Act.
All other AGM resolutions that had been put forward (such as the adoption of the remuneration policy for the Management and Supervisory Boards) were similarly approved by shareholders.
Erste Group ended the Corona year 2020 with a solid operating result of 2.9 billion euros (-1.3% year-on-year). In 2020, the banking group formed almost 1.3 billion euros in risk provisions for impending loan losses in the aftermath of the pandemic. As a result, its net income in 2020 fell by 46.7% to 783 million euros. Customer loans, on the other hand, increased by 3.6% to 166.1 billion euros and customer deposit volumes rose by 9.9% to 191.1 billion euros. The common equity tier 1 ratio (CET1, final) stood at 14.2% at the end of 2020.
Full details for the AGM, including the results of the votes and a video stream of the meeting, will be available at our website (with the video stream available until 22 May 2021): https://www.erstegroup.com/en/investors/events/agm/agm2021