Declaration of Conformity
Corporate Governance at Vossloh
Sound and sustainable corporate governance is essential to perpetuate the trust that a company’s present stockholders and future investors, its lenders, as well as its staff, customers and suppliers place in it. Vossloh’s corporate governance practices are accordingly reviewed on a regular basis. Section 161 of the German Stock Corporation Act (“AktG”) requires the Executive and Supervisory Boards of an exchange-listed stock corporation to issue an annual declaration on the extent to which the recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code Government Commission have been and will be applied.
The current declaration of conformity, in accordance with Section 161 AktG, was issued in November 2023:
Declaration of Conformity 2023
Declaration of Conformity by the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board of Vossloh Aktiengesellschaft with regard to the German Corporate Governance Code
Vossloh Aktiengesellschaft currently complies with all recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code in the version of April 28, 2022, published by the German Federal Ministry of Justice in the official section of the Federal Gazette on June 27, 2022 (DCGK), with the exceptions set out below and will continue to comply with these recommendations with the exceptions set out below in the future.
Recommendation C.4: “A Supervisory Board member who is not a member of any Executive Board of a listed company shall not accept more than five Supervisory Board mandates at non-group listed companies or comparable functions, with an appointment as Chairman of the Supervisory Board being counted twice.”
Explanation: In addition to his mandate as Chairman of the Supervisory Board of Vossloh AG, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Prof. Dr. Grube, has one other Supervisory Board mandate at a listed company (Hamburger Hafen- und Logistik AG), where he is the Chairman of the Supervisory Board. Furthermore, Prof. Dr. Grube holds three other mandates at non-listed companies (please refer to the disclosure on the company’s website) that could be considered to represent comparable functions within the meaning of DCGK recommendation C.4. Prof. Dr. Grube will soon take on another mandate that could be considered comparable. In addition, there is another mandate with a non-comparable function. In the opinion of the Executive Board and the Supervisory Board, Prof. Dr. Grube makes an extremely valuable contribution to the company, not least on account of his outstanding expertise and many years of experience in the industry, and this contribution is not lessened by the additional mandates referred to herein. In particular, Prof. Dr. Grube has sufficient time available to conscientiously fulfill his responsibilities as the Chairman of the company's Supervisory Board.
Recommendation G.10: “Taking the respective tax burden into consideration, Executive Board members’ variable remuneration shall be predominantly invested in company shares by the respective Executive Board member or shall be granted predominantly as share-based remuneration. Granted long-term variable remuneration components shall be accessible to Executive Board members only after a period of four years.”
Explanation: The Supervisory Board considers the share price-based components of the variable remuneration of the Executive Board, which currently account for approx. one-third of the variable Executive Board remuneration, as being sufficient. In this regard, the Supervisory Board takes into account the fact that for share price-based remuneration components, changes in the share price depend not only on the performance of the Executive Board members and the development of the Company, but also on external factors over which the company and its bodies do not have any influence. In light of the recommendation of the DCGK that the first-time appointment of Executive Board members should not exceed a period of three years – a recommendation that is regularly practiced by the company – the Supervisory Board does not believe that a four-year measurement period for the long-term variable remuneration of Executive Board members (or a distribution prohibition of one year directly following the three-year measurement period) would be appropriate.
Furthermore, since the issuance of the previous declaration of conformity in November 2022, Vossloh AG has complied with all recommendations of the German Corporate Governance Code in the version dated April 28, 2022, with the exception of the deviations from recommendations C.4 and G.10 set out above.
Werdohl, November 2023
Vossloh Aktiengesellschaft
The Executive Board / The Supervisory Board