Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the board, I, Dirk-Jan Smit of Freshfields Amsterdam, Civil Law Notary, as chair of this meeting would like to welcome you to the Iveco Group N.V. Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. As Mr. Lorenzo Simonelli, the Senior Non-Executive Director, is unavailable, the board appointed me to chair the meeting. Ms. Suzanne Heywood, chair of the company, and Mr. Gerrit Marx, Chief Executive Officer, are attending by remote connection. The External Auditor, Marcel van Leeuwen from Deloitte Accountants B.V., is currently present. They are available to answer questions in their respective remits. Mr. Bert Spijker, Counsel at Freshfields Amsterdam, is appointed Secretary of this meeting. The proceedings will be held in English. There are headphones available for simultaneous translation from English into Dutch for shareholders attending in person.
The convening notice of the meeting was published on the company's website on March 5th, 2024, in accordance with legal and statutory requirements. The use of audio-video recording devices by shareholders is not allowed. I invite those attending in person who wish to speak to liaise with the shareholders' assistance table and specify the issue they wish to discuss. In order to allow proper recording for the minutes, I counsel guests, those of you who wish to address the meeting to intervene when invited to do so using one of the microphones in the meeting room and, as soon as I've granted permission to address the meeting, to state your name clearly and, if applicable, the name of the person or company that you are representing. Shareholders' speeches must be concise and strictly relevant to the meeting.
Any commands constituting a disturbance or that are offensive or improper will not be allowed. In my role as chair of the meeting, I consider a maximum of five minutes to be appropriate for each shareholder desiring to speak on a particular agenda item. In the interest of an ordinary meeting, I therefore reserve the right to deny a shareholder the possibility to continue to speak beyond this limit, including in the case that their commands do not relate to the business of the company or any voting declaration. The company has made it possible to follow this AGM via a webcast currently being broadcast live on Iveco Group's website. In addition, it has granted shareholders entitled to attend the opportunity to submit written questions in advance regarding the agenda items, according to terms set forth in the convening notice. No questions were submitted prior to the meeting.
Agenda items will be addressed following their order and will be discussed in sequence. Shareholders have been given the opportunity to exercise their voting rights prior to the meeting via web procedure, according to the terms set forth in the convening notice. For shareholders attending today in person, voting will take place electronically. Voting on sub-items will be deferred until the discussion and Q&A phase on the last sub-item of that specific agenda item are closed. I now ask you to insert your smart card into your voting device with the chip facing you. You will see your name appear on the display. If this is not the case, please raise your hand to allow the personnel in charge to assist you. You can keep the smart card inserted in the voting device for the entire duration of the meeting.
In the event you wish to exercise a split vote on your holdings, please go to the shareholders' assistance table. When voting on each agenda sub-item, and the voting system is activated, the voting device will display the voting options. Please press one to vote for, two against, and three abstain. The final voting results, including votes cast in advance of the meeting via web, will be posted on the company's website after the meeting, in compliance with applicable law and regulations. Now I'll leave the floor to the Chair and the Chief Executive Officer of the company for their addresses to the shareholders.
Thank you. Dear shareholders, good morning and good afternoon to all of you joining from different parts of the world and to everyone present in Amsterdam. It is with pleasure that I address you today, sharing detail on our second year of operations as an independent company. Throughout the year, and indeed since our founding in January 2022, Iveco Group's cohesive management team and workforce have put people at the core of its operations. These people include our customers, dealers, suppliers, partners, and, of course, our valued shareholders. Your satisfaction and continued support are critical for us. 2023 was a period of transformation as the group focused on actions to drive innovation, partnership, and sustainability. These strategic pillars guided the decisions we made, the way we did business, and the ambitious targets we set themselves. Allow me to highlight our performance, beginning with the first strategic pillar: innovation.
We made significant progress last year on innovation. We advanced the development and commercialization of our multi-energy propulsion systems, giving our customers flexibility in their energy choices. We maintained a multi-energy and technologically neutral approach for all our trucks, vans, and buses, bearing in mind both the continued regulatory uncertainty around energy systems and our company's focus on sustainability. Last year, we introduced our new Cursor 13-liter internal combustion engine, which underlines this multi-energy approach since it can run on multiple fuels, including diesel, methane, and biomethane, renewable fuels, and, in the future, hydrogen. Alongside this, we also introduced battery electric and hydrogen fuel cell electric propulsion systems. These solutions will play an important part in our net-zero emission journey. We also challenged ourselves to apply the latest technology to the way in which we support our customers throughout the product lifecycle.
At the end of 2023, over 140,000 vehicles on the roads were connected to our control room and our Iveco ON portal. This connectivity improves fuel consumption, productivity, and uptime while making driving safer and enabling remote assistance. Given the benefits that this connectivity brings to our customers by reducing their total cost of ownership, we are committed to connecting 500,000 vehicles by 2030. The immense amount of data generated by our connected vehicles will not only help our customers. It will also help us to develop software-defined vehicles. These vehicles will be able to manage operations, add functionalities, and enable new features primarily or entirely through software. Advancements like these are opening the door to new business models. Consider GATE, our fully digital, pay-per-use rental model for green vehicles.
GATE offers customers who want to use zero-emission mobility options like our electric or hydrogen vehicles a full set of digital services bundled together, including insurance, maintenance and repair, and tire management. We launched a pilot for GATE last July in Italy and plan to roll it out in major European markets starting this year. Innovation is, of course, also an enabler for improvements in quality production. Last September, we inaugurated our E-Bench testing center in France. This is the only facility of its kind in Europe that can test not only the individual components of buses but also entire large-scale vehicles. It uses the latest technologies to ensure even greater precision and accuracy in our production processes. Let's now move on to the second strategic pillar: partnership. Reinforcing our relationships with trusted partners and forging new collaborations are a core part of how we operate.
They have become the cornerstone of the Iveco Group way and applied across the company. In 2023, we made a series of announcements about strategic partnerships. I would like to remind you about a few of these. I'll begin with Hyundai Motor Company, a partnership that started 2 years ago and has already seen many joint developments. In particular, in 2023, we announced an important co-development project for the new hydrogen-powered city bus, unveiled at Busworld in October. The Iveco Bus E-Way H2 is equipped with Hyundai's advanced fuel cell system and FPT Industrial's battery pack. Another valuable partnership is with Plus, a global provider of highly automated driving solutions. In July 2023, we began operating our Iveco heavy-duty truck equipped with PlusDrive on public roads in Germany. By doing this, we are able to test our AI, autonomous driving software, and advanced sensors in real-world conditions.
Last year, we also further developed our partnership network for the comprehensive portfolio of financing and service solutions offered by Iveco Capital. Eurowag, a smart solution provider for commercial road transport, joined us in October 2023 when we began integrating its payment cards for fuel purchases, tolls, and VAT refunds, all of which will benefit our customers. In the defense sector, we have a longstanding collaboration with BAE Systems for the development of our amphibious range of vehicles. In 2023, we marked the successful delivery of over 270 units to the U.S. Marine Corps, demonstrating this partnership's ability to engineer remarkable products and to deliver what it promises. I'd now like to talk about our third strategic pillar: sustainability.
We have set ourselves four sustainability priorities: reaching net-zero carbon by 2040, reducing workplace injuries and enhancing road safety, applying circular economy thinking for all our products from the design phase to end-of-life recycling, and fostering an inclusive and engaging work environment. I would like to list, with some pride and with full credit to my Iveco Group colleagues, some of our sustainability achievements in 2023. We surpassed our goal of recycling 60% of the water used in our global facilities. In fact, we recycled 64%. We also surpassed our 2026 target of having 23% of Iveco Group's management positions being held by women. By the end of 2023, three years ahead of target, 24% of these roles were held by women, a significant increase from the 18% held in 2021. Our net promoter score in customer experience increased by 20 percentage points in 2023 compared to 2021.
This was a gain three years ahead of plan. We are also on track to meet our workplace injury reduction targets set for 2026, something that we take very seriously indeed. Since publishing our first sustainability report in April 2023, we have welcomed external scrutiny of our efforts in all these areas. This resulted in us being included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices for both the world and Europe. We were ranked in the top 5% of S&P Global Sustainability Yearbook for 2024. In addition, in our first year of participation in the EcoVadis Sustainability Assessment, we achieved gold medal certification and ranked among the top 5% of the more than 100,000 participating companies. Last year, we also joined the UN Global Compact, the world's largest corporate sustainability initiative.
This compact includes companies that are aligning their operations and strategies with universally accepted principles of human and labor rights, environmental protection, and anti-corruption practices. We are proud to participate in this initiative. Notwithstanding these achievements, we are very aware that we must keep focused to maintain the progress we are making. There is no doubt that the industry will face challenges this year, which will impact us as well as our customers and their businesses. We are confident that by maintaining steady governance and staying aligned with our values, we will deliver as promised throughout the year. For this reason, the board of directors fully endorses Gerrit Marx and his leadership team. We wish them the very best as Iveco Group accelerates on its journey in its third year of operations. I also wish to thank you, our valued shareholders, for your continued support.
I will now turn the call over to Gerrit.
Thank you, Suzanne, and welcome, everyone, participating in our annual general meeting today. As our chair just said, Iveco Group is accelerating. This is possible because of the strong foundation we set in 2022, our first year of operations, and the strategic transformation we drove throughout last year, 2023. As remarked in our recent Capital Markets Day held in Turin in March, by the end of 2023, we had already met our key targets for 2026, over ahead of the previous trajectory. Behind this strong performance were our business units, each one focused on meeting customer demand while closely monitoring profit generation, cash management, through tight control over the supply chain. We consistently accelerated the completion rate of our unfinished products and the delivery of our order backlog. We delivered solid financial results, raising our financial guidance quarter-over-quarter to reflect the financial health of the group.
All in all, we registered positive results in all our major performance indicators. I would like to take a brief moment to recognize the effective one-team approach that expands across the entire company and all 36,000 colleagues, unique people who share the same purpose and values. My thanks go out to everyone at Iveco Group. I will now provide a snapshot of the main product launches that occurred during the full year 2023. In January, FPT Industrial debuted their new Cursor 13-liter hydrogen combustion engine together with Prinoth on the world's first hydrogen-powered snow groomer. Our powertrain brand also designed e-propulsion systems for new segments like high-performance sports cars. Our supply to Maserati for the GranTurismo Folgore is a great example of this.
In July, as already recalled by Suzanne, GATE, our green and advanced transport ecosystem, launched its pilot program in Italy for the pay-per-use long-term rental of zero-emission commercial vehicles. We will expand the GATE business model to other European countries starting this year. I would like to highlight that GATE will not be limited to vehicles made and distributed by Iveco Group. It is also designed to deploy vehicles of other brands as a commercial flywheel driving electromobility at scale, regardless of the OEM. Busworld was held in October when we exhibited our full Iveco Bus product lineup, including the new hydrogen-powered city bus developed in partnership with Hyundai Motor Company that our chair mentioned already earlier. Importantly, last November in Barcelona, Iveco presented its full renewed model year 2024 range, concluding a EUR 1 billion investment cycle.
This was the first time in the brand's history that every single product line was renewed at the same time. This was also when FPT Industrial introduced the all-new 13-liter Cursor multifuel engine, delivering up to 10% fuel efficiency in diesel and gas over its predecessor engine platform. Iveco Group registered several other achievements in 2023 that impacted the way we do business. In January, we acquired a controlling stake in MIRA UGV, the uncrewed ground vehicle division of HORIBA MIRA, global provider of automotive engineering, research, and test services headquartered in the U.K. This has now become IDV Robotics, our new division for remote-controlled and autonomous ground vehicles for defense.
The inauguration of our Foggia plant in April enabled our bus business to further solidify its European position in the city and intercity segments, reinforcing its presence in Italy and better covering the country with the production of electric buses. In May, we acquired the full and sole ownership of the Germany-based former joint venture Nikola Iveco Europe, now called EVCO for Electric Vehicle Company. Our electric heavy-duty truck activities are now centered in EVCO, and we are exploring options to repartner for growth in zero-emission heavy trucking. In November, the European Investment Bank agreed to finance Iveco Group for up to EUR 500 million for the decarbonization of the transport sector. This will enable the group to invest further in research and development.
In another strategic move, last December, we signed an agreement with Hedin Mobility for the sale of our distribution and retail business for light, medium, and heavy-duty trucks in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark. The transaction is expected to close by mid-2024, subject to regulatory approvals. Let me now move to our financial results for 2023. We closed the year with consolidated net revenues of EUR 16.2 billion, up almost 13% versus the prior year. Net revenues from industrial activities reached EUR 15.9 billion, up 12.1% versus the previous year, supported by solid price realization, positive volume for trucks and buses in Europe, and a favorable mix.
Financial services net revenues totaled EUR 494 million, up EUR 213 million compared to 2022. Consolidated adjusted EBIT was up EUR 413 million, or plus 78% versus the prior year, closing at EUR 940 million with an adjusted EBIT margin of 5.8%, up 210 basis points versus 2022.
The adjusted EBIT from industrial activities reached EUR 818 million, posting a EUR 394 million year-over-year increase underpinned by continuously strong price realization, positive volume in trucks and buses in Europe, and a favorable mix throughout the year. As a result, the adjusted EBIT margin from industrial activities closed at 5.2%, up 220 basis points versus the previous year. Consolidated adjusted net income for the period was EUR 352 million, 127 million higher than the prior year, despite a severe year-over-year increase in financial charges as a result of higher interest rates as well as the adverse impact of the Argentine peso devaluation over the period and the related hyperinflation accounting. On a positive note, our full year 2023 adjusted effective tax rate closed at 28% compared to 30% last year, mainly reflecting the different tax rates applied in the jurisdiction in which Iveco Group operates.
As a result of all of the above, the adjusted diluted EPS was EUR 1.23, up EUR 0.0045 compared to full year 2022. The adjusted net income attributable to Iveco Group closed at EUR 336 million and excluded the profit attributable to non-controlling interest. Now moving to our cash results. In 2023, we generated EUR 412 million of positive free cash flow from industrial activities, primarily due to the strong performance of all our businesses and despite the severe macroeconomic and geopolitical headwinds faced throughout the period. Please note that when comparing our 2023 free cash flow number to the prior year, it needs to be highlighted that the 2022 result was positively impacted by two one-off cash items, totaling around EUR 160 million, including an exceptional fleet depletion that started in August 2022 and the sale of a plant in Australia.
Also, the 2023 free cash flow figure incorporated the impact of the acquisition of the MIRA uncrewed ground vehicle division and the full consolidation of EVCO, the former Nikola Iveco Europe joint venture. As a result, our net industrial cash position was EUR 1.9 billion at the end of 2023, which, when adjusted for the sudden extraordinary Argentine peso devaluation that occurred in the last weeks of the year, more than exceeded the EUR 2 billion amount. Finally, available liquidity, including undrawn committed credit lines, remained solid at EUR 4.7 billion at the end of the year. Fully in line with what we communicated in February this year and confirmed by our Capital Markets Day 2024, we propose distributing an annual cash dividend of EUR 0.22 per common share, totaling approximately EUR 59 million.
We request authorization to repurchase up to 10 million common shares for total consideration not to exceed EUR 113 million, subject to market and business conditions inter alia to serve the company's equity incentive plans. These matters are included as discussion items on today's agenda. Let me repeat that last year, all our operational targets were met or exceeded in spite of a certain number of challenges that we encountered. Our third year as an independently listed group is well underway. In March, we held a very successful investment day in Turin where we illustrated our revised ambitions for the 2024 to 2028 period. We have also already made several strategic announcements, including a supply agreement with Hyundai for the distribution in Europe of the Iveco-badged all-electric chassis cab.
This will extend our light commercial vehicle range for good transport to an even lighter category of less than 3.5 tons in gross vehicle weight. Hyundai will build the vehicle on its recently launched electric platform, and Iveco will exclusively customize, distribute, and service them in Europe through its sales channels. We also announced that we intend to move together with Hyundai Motor Company into electric-born heavy-duty truck solutions, both battery electric and fuel cell electric for European markets. Always looking to improve our vehicles, we just signed a non-binding agreement with Ford Otosan to jointly invest in a new cabin structure for heavy-duty trucks that will be compliant with upcoming regulations on direct vision and mass and dimensions. We will work together with Ford Otosan to explore the potential for other mutually beneficial co-developments in this area.
One final announcement we made recently is that we just completed our pursuit for Magirus's next chapter of serving heroes and entered into an agreement with Mutares to transfer the ownership. The firefighting business will gain independence from Iveco Group and unlock its potential as a standalone bodybuilder, taking the next step in its longstanding history to compete even more effectively in its unique market. We expect to close the transaction by the beginning of 2025. So you can see that 2024 is already standing out as a year of acceleration. We will continue to go beyond with the entrepreneurial passion that characterizes us, always looking ahead at what we can do and will dare to do tomorrow. With that, I will turn it back over to Mr. Smit, who will continue with the formal business of the meeting.
Thank you very much, Gerrit.
We now come to the formal business of the meeting. As at the record date, the company had a total number of 345,458,970 issued shares. These consisted of 271,215,400 common shares and 74,243,570 special voting shares. All outstanding shares confer a right to cast one vote each, with the exception of the 1,176,816 common shares and the 70,609 special voting shares held in treasury by the company. As a result, at the record date, the total number of voting rights amounted to 344,211,545. The number of voting rights at this meeting, including the shares voted via web, amounts to 244,106,961, which corresponds to 70.92% of the total number of voting rights as at the record date. Let me now turn to item two of the agenda.
The 2023 annual financial statements were made available on the company's website and at the company's principal office and business address as of the 5th of March, 2024. I will now provide a brief summary and explanation of the six agenda sub-items of this agenda item two. Sub-item 2A is the first voting item, and it concerns the adoption of the 2023 annual financial statements. These have been approved by the board and audited by Deloitte Accountants B.V. with an unqualified audit opinion. The board proposes that the shareholders adopt the 2023 annual financial statements. Sub-item 2B concerns the policy on additions to reserves and on dividends. This is a discussion item only. The company's dividend policy contemplates an annual dividend payout of around 25% to the holders of common shares only.
The board has sole discretion to determine to propose to the general meeting the actual level of dividend as to be distributed, and such will be subject to any factors that the board may deem relevant at the time of distribution. Special voting shares will not entitle to any distribution of dividends out of the annual profits. The balance between the total amount of the dividends for the financial year and the full amount of profits shown in the company's corresponding annual accounts shall accrue to the reserves of the company. The dividend policy is presented to the annual general meeting of shareholders for discussion only, with no vote. Sub-item 2C concerns the distribution of dividend, and this is a voting item.
As the company's dividend policy, the board proposes the distribution of a dividend in cash of EUR 0.22 per outstanding common share, totaling approximately EUR 59 million, with an ex-date of 22 April, a record date of 23 April, and a payment date of 24 April 2024. Sub-item 2D concerns the remuneration report for the financial year 2023. Pursuant to applicable rules, this is an advisory voting item. The remuneration report is included in the company's annual report. It has been drawn up in compliance with applicable disclosure requirements and in line with the recommendations of the Dutch Corporate Governance Code. Sub-item 2E concerns the company's compliance with the revised Dutch Corporate Governance Code and is a discussion-only item.
The Corporate Governance Code Monitoring Committee recommends that companies submit to their general meetings, as a separate agenda item in 2024, the chapter in the report of the board outlining the corporate governance structure and compliance with the version of the Dutch Corporate Governance Code as updated and published on December 20th, 2022, which came into force as of the financial year starting on 1st of January, 2023. In the case of Iveco Group, the relevant chapter corresponds to the section Corporate Governance of the report on operations, which provides the information required by Dutch law and the Dutch Corporate Governance Code, as well as a description of the existing deviations from the Dutch Corporate Governance Code. The chapter is presented to the annual general meeting of shareholders for discussion only, with no vote.
Sub-item 2F relates to the sustainability report for the year 2023 and is presented to the shareholders for discussion only. In addition to the annual report, the company has opted to publish a separate sustainability report aimed at providing its stakeholders a comprehensive overview of Iveco Group's operations, integrating its financial results and economic commitments with its environmental and social ones. Submitting the document to the annual general meeting of shareholders is meant as a matter of voluntary accountability. The report has been drawn up by the board in accordance with the GRI Standards and includes correspondence tables for the main international standards, like those of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, the World Economic Forum, and the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures. The sustainability report is presented to the annual general meeting of shareholders for discussion only, with no vote.
Is there anyone who would like to ask questions in relation to this agenda item? If not, I would suggest that we put item 2A on the agenda to a vote and that is the adoption of the 2023 annual financial statements. Voting is open. Closed. I conclude that the proposal has been approved and the 2023 annual financial statements have been adopted by the general meeting. Next, I put the successive voting item, that is sub-item 2C, on the agenda to vote, and that is the distribution of dividends. I request the operator to activate the system. Thank you very much. Voting is closed. I establish that the majority to vote were cast in favor of the distribution of dividends as per the board's proposal.
Moving on to sub-item 2D and putting that to a vote, and that is the remuneration report for the financial year 2023. I request the operator to activate the system. Thank you. Votes are closed. I establish that the majority of the votes cast are in favor of the remuneration report for the financial year 2023. Sub-items 2E and 2F were presented to the shareholders for discussion only, with no vote, so that we can now turn to agenda item three. Under item three and its relevant sub-items 3A and 3B, shareholders are invited to vote on the release of the executive and non-executive directors from liability for the performance of their duties as reflected in the annual accounts or otherwise disclosed to the annual general meeting prior to the adoption of the annual accounts. Are there any questions?
If not, I would suggest to move on to the voting. I request the operator to put 3A to a vote, and that is the release from liability of the executive directors. Vote is closed. I establish that the proposal has been approved. Let me now turn to sub-item 3B on the agenda, and that is the release from liability of the non-executive directors. I request the operator to activate the voting system. Vote is closed. I establish that the general meeting has approved the proposal. I move to the next item on the agenda, agenda item four. Pursuant to the company's Articles of Association, the term of office of the company's directors expires on the day of the first annual general meeting of shareholders in the calendar year following their appointment, and each director may be reappointed.
The number of directors is determined by the board. As the board believes that it has the appropriate composition and mix in terms of skills, independence, and diversity, that both executive directors and non-executive directors presently in charge have performed well and demonstrated due commitment to their respective roles in the company, and that all have stated their willingness to accept their reappointment with the only exception of [Garbled Name], based on the ESG committee's recommendation, the number of directors is set at nine, two executive directors and seven non-executive directors. The board proposes the annual general meeting of shareholders to separately reappoint each of Mrs. Heywood and Mr.
Marx as an executive director and each of Tufan Erginbilgic as Essimari Kairisto, Linda Knoll, Alessandro Nasi, Olof Persson, and Lorenzo Simonelli as a non-executive director, and to appoint a new non-executive director in the person of Judy Curran. The relevant biographical details and curricula vitae of the nominees have been timely made available. In the board's opinion, the independence criteria according to the Dutch Corporate Governance Code are met by Mr. Erginbilgic, Mrs. Kairisto, Mrs. Knoll, Mr. Persson, Mr. Simonelli, as well as Mrs. Curran. Any questions in relation to this agenda item? If not, I would suggest that we move to sub-item 4A, and I kindly invite you to vote on the reappointment of Suzanne Heywood as executive director. I request the voting system to be activated. Vote closed. I establish that the proposal has been approved and that Mrs.
Heywood has been reappointed as Executive Director. Congratulations. Agenda sub-item 4B relates to the reappointment of Gerrit Marx as Executive Director, and I request the voting system to be activated. Voting closed. The proposal has been approved, and Mr. Marx has been reappointed as Executive Director. Congratulations. Agenda sub-item 4C relates to the appointment of Judy Curran as Non-Executive Director, and I request the voting system to be activated. Voting closed. The proposal has been approved, and Mrs. Curran has been appointed as Non-Executive Director. Agenda item 4D relates to the reappointment of Tufan Erginbilgic as Non-Executive Director, and I request the voting system to be activated. Voting is closed. The proposal has been approved, and Mr. Erginbilgic has been reappointed as Non-Executive Director. Agenda sub-item 4E relates to the reappointment of Essimari Kairisto as Non-Executive Director, and I request the voting system to be activated.
Vote is closed. The proposal has been approved, and Mrs. Kairisto has been reappointed as Non-Executive Director. Agenda sub-item 4F relates to the reappointment of Linda Knoll as Non-Executive Director, and I request the voting system to be activated. Voting is closed. The proposal has been approved, and Mrs. Knoll has been reappointed as Non-Executive Director. Agenda sub-item 4G relates to the reappointment of Alessandro Nasi as Non-Executive Director, and I request the voting system to be activated. Voting is closed. The proposal has been approved, and Mr. Nasi has been reappointed as Non-Executive Director. Agenda sub-item 4H relates to the reappointment of Olof Persson as Non-Executive Director, and I request the voting system to be activated. Voting is closed. The proposal has been approved, and Mr. Persson has been reappointed as Non-Executive Director.
Agenda sub-item 4I relates to the reappointment of Lorenzo Simonelli as Non-Executive Director, and I request the voting system to be activated. Vote is closed. The proposal has been approved, and Mr. Simonelli has been reappointed as Non-Executive Director. I will now move to the next item on the meeting agenda. Under agenda item five, the shareholders are proposed to reappoint Deloitte Accountants B.V. as the company's independent auditor for the financial year 2024. The audit committee has reviewed the performance of the independent auditor and the effectiveness of the audit. Based on such review, the audit committee has recommended the reappointment of Deloitte Accountants B.V. as the company's independent auditor for the financial year 2024. The board concurs with the audit committee's recommendations. Is there anyone wishing to ask a question in relation to this topic?
If not, let's move on to the vote, and I declare the resolution open. Vote closed. The proposal has been approved, and we will now move to the last item on the meeting agenda. Under agenda item six, it is proposed to replace the existing authorization to buy back common shares, which was granted by the general meeting of shareholders for a period of 18 months from April 14th, 2023, with a new one on substantially the same terms.
The proposed authorization is for the board to decide upon the acquisition of the company's own common shares through purchases on the stock exchange and/or multilateral trading facilities directly and/or otherwise for a period of 18 months from the date of this annual general meeting of shareholders, which means up to and including 16 October 2025, in one or more transactions subject to market and business conditions and in compliance with applicable rules and regulations. The board's authority shall be limited to a maximum of up to 10 million common shares, equal to approximately 2.89% of the company's overall issued share capital as existing on the day this annual general meeting was convened, with a maximum total allocation to this end of EUR 130 million.
With due respect to applicable rules and regulations, purchases would have to take place for a price per common share, excluding expenses, no less than its nominal value, and no more than 10% above the opening price as shown in the official price list of Euronext Milan on the day of acquisition. Under the proposed authorization, the board may decide to launch a buyback program subject to due compliance with applicable rules and regulations. The authorization sought for does not obligate the company to buy back any common shares or to launch any share buyback program. The proposal to authorize the board to decide upon a buyback of common shares intends inter alia to allow the board to cover the company's obligations related to share-based remuneration under existing and/or future equity incentive plans.
The annual general meeting of shareholders is proposed to replace the existing authorization and grant a new one subject to the terms and conditions described above. Anyone wishing to ask a question in relation to this topic? If not, I would suggest to move on to the vote, and I request the operator to activate the voting system. Vote is closed. I establish that the proposal has been approved and that the authorization to buy back common shares has been granted. Moving on to agenda item seven, close of the meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, as there are no further items to discuss or resolve upon, this concludes the formal business of the meeting. I therefore declare the meeting closed. On behalf of the company, I would like to thank you very much for following this meeting. Thank you.