Roche's Annual General Meeting, which was held in Basel, has approved all of the Board of Directors' proposals. The 818 shareholders in attendance, representing 142,963,212 or 89.4% of a total of 160,000,000 bearer shares, approved the 2010 Annual Report and financial statements. They also authorised a dividend increase of 10% to 6.60 Swiss francs per share and non-voting equity.
In a consultative vote shareholders took note of Roche's Remuneration Report, approving it with 99.2% of the votes represented.
Paul Bulcke (CEO of Nestlé SA), Christoph Franz (CEO of Lufthansa AG) and Peter Voser (CEO of Royal Dutch Shell plc) were elected as new members of the Board. Bruno Gehrig, Pius Baschera, Lodewijk de Vink and Andreas Oeri were re-elected to the Board. Walter Frey (on the Board since 2001) and Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer (on the Board since 2007) did not stand for re-election. The Annual General Meeting also voted to reduce the term of office for Board members from three to two years.
Franz B. Humer, Chairman of the Board of Directors, said: "Walter Frey and Wolfgang Ruttenstorfer made valuable contributions to Roche's development during their time on the Board. I welcome that with Paul Bulcke, Christoph Franz and Peter Voser, experienced leaders have been elected to the Board."
Severin Schwan, CEO of Roche Group, commented on the business results for 2010: "Roche once again posted solid results in an increasingly challenging market environment. As the world's largest biotech company and the leading provider of in-vitro-diagnostics, Roche is well positioned for the future. By driving Personalised Healthcare, we can increase the efficacy and safety of medicines for patients, but also contribute to a more effective healthcare delivery. Already half of our twelve new molecular entities in late stage development have been developed for specific patient subpopulations."
About Roche
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is a leader in research-focused healthcare with combined strengths in pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. Roche is the world's largest biotech company with truly differentiated medicines in oncology, virology, inflammation, metabolism and CNS. Roche is also the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics, tissue-based cancer diagnostics and a pioneer in diabetes management. Roche's personalised healthcare strategy aims at providing medicines and diagnostic tools that enable tangible improvements in the health, quality of life and survival of patients. In 2010, Roche had over 80’000 employees worldwide and invested over 9 billion Swiss francs in R&D. The Group posted sales of 47.5 billion Swiss francs. Genentech, United States, is a wholly owned member of the Roche Group. Roche has a majority stake in Chugai Pharmaceutical, Japan.