Welcome all of you. Welcome to all of you who are here, present here physically, and welcome to all of you who are following the webcast. We are very happy to see people turning up today here at the tail end of the pandemic, and we are happy to be able to work live instead of having a fully virtual AGM. ALK's articles of association stipulate that the board of directors shall appoint the chairman of the AGM, and this year we have appointed Attorney at Law, Emil Denker-Stenbæk of Bech-Bruun as Chairman of the AGM. I give the floor to Emil.
Thank you very much, and thank you for appointing me Chairman of the AGM of ALK-Abelló A/S. I hope we'll have a good AGM and a good debate.
My first job is to ensure that the general meeting has been convened in accordance with the rules, and that it is competent of the transaction of the business. According to the articles of association, there has to be a message sent out and also specifically to people who have registered their names. Everything was sent out on the 21st of February of this year. Also on the 21st of February this year, the company sent out a company notice about convening the AGM. The agenda, all the proposals, and the annual report and other legally required documents have been available at the company office and on the website since the 21st of February . This is all in compliance with the Danish Companies Act and the articles of association of the company.
Unless there are any objections, I can conclude that this annual general meeting has been convened correctly and is competent for the transaction of the business. Nobody asked for the floor, so I think everybody is in agreement. Just before we start the AGM, we recorded that there are 44 persons present here today, and of them 20 are shareholders and 24 are guests, journalists, advisors, et cetera. I also conclude that 83.5% of the shares is represented. That's deducting treasury shares, and 69.8% of the shares are represented, also deducting treasury shares. The final numbers will be in the minutes.
As mentioned in earlier years, we have to go through the Danish Companies Act, Section 101(5), which requires that there is a total list of the voting pattern, even when the vote is quite clear. I propose that we do what we have done every other year in the company and move away from that requirement, which is perfectly legal if everybody agrees. I will conclude then, unless somebody objects now, and nobody has objected, so I thank you for that. Any shareholder who wants the floor under the various items on the agenda need to tell me about it, and you do that by showing your access card when you want to access the rostrum. I ask you to come up here to speak so that we have a good debate and everybody can see each other.
The agenda has been sent out with the convening notice, and it also appears from the slide here. First item is report on the activities of the company. Item two, approval of the annual report and resolution to discharge the Board of Directors and the Board of Management. Three, resolutions on the allocation of profits. Four, adoption of the remuneration report for 2021. Five, adoption of the remuneration to the Board of Directors for the present year. Six, election of the Chairman of the Board. Seven, election of the Vice Chairman of the Board. Eight, election of other members of the Board of Directors. Nine, appointment of auditor. 10 are proposals from the Board of Directors. There are four proposals this year. 10-A is renewal of the Board's powers to increase the share capital. 10-B, amendment of the denomination of shares. 10-C, amendment of Article 6.4.
10-D, authorization to the Chairman of the meeting. The last item on the agenda is item 11, any other business. With that, we move to the agenda. As always at ALK, we take the first items as one. Now we come items one to four as one, and we will also have a debate of those four items afterwards together. With that, I give the floor to the Chairman of the Board, Anders Hedegaard, so he can report on the activities, present the annual report, resolution of allocation of profits, and remuneration report. You have the floor, Mr. Anders Hedegaard.
Thank you for the floor. Now let's hear what we really want to hear, how ALK has been doing for the past year. I'm very happy to be able to share that with you because the past year brought many highlights for ALK. I'm not going to go through all of them, but I would just like to highlight a few of them. Sales rose by 12% last year.
Last year, we reached the highest level in the long history of the company, DKK 3.9 billion, with growth in all regions exceeding 10%. Tablets also cemented their position as ALK's key driver for growth and the fastest-growing category in ALK's markets. Tablet sales increased by 29% in 2021. Our EBITDA rose by 35% to DKK 534 million. That's the second-best result in our history. In spite of delivering that result, we have still spent more than DKK 630 million on research and development. It's another good year in our history, in spite of the challenges that we've been facing and that we've all been facing when it comes to the COVID situation. We saw operational challenges, but of course, we also saw price increases caused by the COVID situation during the fall.
COVID has given us all a number of challenges. In ALK, the first priority was to ensure the safety and well-being of our staff and also ensure the supply of products for doctors and their patients. Despite these challenges, the pandemic proved manageable for ALK, and we still delivered an amazing result. We saw that some of our clinical trials had to be revised, but all in all, we came through the pandemic quite well. That really speaks to the transformation that ALK has been through for the past couple of years. We've become a robust business, and our platform has shown its worth throughout the pandemic. That also bears eloquent testimony to the flexibility and adaptability of our management and staff and to our determination to succeed with the goals that we've set.
We in the board of directors, and I'm sure I speak for all of our shareholders when I say that we are very grateful to our staff for all of this. One of our targets is to ensure allergy treatment for all, and let me dig a bit deeper into this goal. ALK's work to help people with allergy across the world is part of the plan that we call Access to Allergy Care for All. That plan contains a number of ambitious goals. This year, in 2021, we helped 2.1 million people with our allergy products. That number rose by 100,000 last year, and we are working to achieve similar growth again this year and the next. This is much needed. More than 500 million people worldwide suffer from allergic rhinitis.
Our focus is on those patients who have such severe symptoms that they warrant treatment with immunotherapy. We estimate that this comprises one in ten patients around the world. That is approximately 50 million people. These are people for whom allergies mean a reduced quality of life, impaired learning at school for children, lower productivity at work for adults, insomnia, restrictions in social life, and other consequences. It's a problem for each of these people individually, but it's also a problem for society. Although 50 million people might benefit from our treatment, fewer than 5 million people are receiving immunotherapy today. Out of these, we of course only supply products for some of them. Our work to broaden the scope of immunotherapy globally is an important target for us. I would like to mention some of the things that we've done.
We made clinical and commercial progress with all our five tablets in 2021. Here I would just like to mention that ALK's major phase III clinical trials with ACARIZAX and ITULAZAX in children with allergies are going according to plan and are expected to be completed in 2023. We recently had excellent news in China concerning ACARIZAX, in that we have been granted exemption from our chamber trial, which was delayed because of COVID, and we may submit our registration application already this year. Another aspect that we work on in order to introduce immunotherapy globally is with our digital activities. Here, the goal is to mobilize the many allergy patients to get them to take a test or contact a specialist and ultimately use our treatment and products. We are very proud that we have activated 375,000 people with allergies.
We mobilize them to react to our digital activities. Now that we have mobilized these people, our final task is to get them ultimately to take our tablet treatment. Here we still have a challenge. We need to create contact between these engaged patients and translate that into growth in tablet sales. We have a number of digital activities, and just this afternoon, management had a demonstration of many of these activities at our board meeting. We can see how management as well as all of our staff are working in many different directions to find solutions to this. There's no doubt that this is a task at the center of our work on a day-to-day basis, when we are really trying to get more people to solve their own challenges with their allergies.
Let me get back to the results in 2021. Previously, I mentioned that we have seen two-digit growth rates in our regions in Europe, in North America, and in our international markets. We have seen impressive results in all three regions, but particularly in Europe. Europe is an important market to ALK, and here again, we have seen high growth rates in an otherwise flat pharmaceutical market. This really demonstrates how well-run our company is when we can grow by 10% and achieve a result of DKK 2.8 billion, despite COVID-related restrictions in several markets. In North America, it was most of all our Itulazax and GRAZAX that drove growth in Germany and the Nordic countries. Our sales of SCIT and SLIT-drops declined slightly owing to the planned phase-out of older products.
In spite of this decline, we still achieved the planned phase-out of these older products. We were also affected by the COVID situation, which meant that our adrenaline pen, JEXT, was subject to fewer prescriptions. In spite of these negative trends, we did still see two-digit growth in Europe. In North America, revenue rose by 23% to DKK 683 million. Growth returned following a period when COVID changed the behavior in many patients and reduced capacities at many allergy clinics. Tablet sales in North America increased 42%, and at the same time, sales of allergen extracts and diagnostics, as well as other products, grew in North America. I'm glad to see that growth is in the double digits and broadly based in the U.S.
We must also be honest and say that we haven't yet seen a real breakthrough for the tablets. 42% growth is impressive, but we're not quite there yet. As I mentioned before, management is working on implementing a number of different initiatives in order to release many of the patients who are today only offered extracts. They offer these products because there's a financial incentive to keep them in the old product schemes. We, of course, continue to work for a breakthrough in the U.S., and there are many different activities that will contribute to solving this challenge. In international markets, revenue grew by 15% to DKK 424 million as a result of solid double-digit growth in the large markets of Japan and China. Both markets are gaining momentum.
In particular, in China, where we are hoping that our registration application will lead to a product launch in 2024, and that means that we expect further growth in China. Turning to product categories, as mentioned, tablet sales exhibited eminently good growth rates. Tablet sales rose by 29% to DKK 1.8 billion. Tablets, thus, represented 45% of ALK's total sales. The sales of SCIT and SLIT drops were essentially unchanged, but sales of other products rose by 10%. Looking at our key figures. As I said to begin with, we saw good organic growth of 12%. Not many pharmaceutical companies today with such a great European presence can see revenue growth of that caliber.
As I mentioned before, this is on the basis of a solid transformation of the company, because many of the challenges we had before have been transformed into a robust presence and strong growth. The gross margin improved by 3 percentage points, in part due to increased tablet sales, but also as a result of the efficiency program that we initiated in order to strengthen the quality of our products, but also to keep down our costs. Our earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortization, EBITDA, grew from DKK 395 million to DKK 534 million, and this result was significantly better than the result that we expected at the start of the year. Much for 2021, the key figures. Let's now turn our attention to the future and our expectations for ALK in the coming years.
Last year, in a cooperation between management and the board, we had a couple of strategy days in which we updated our strategy that had been a great success in the first couple of years. Now we were looking ahead to 2025.
Our ambition up to 2025 and the years after will be to grow organically by 10% or more per year. While steadily raising earnings to an EBIT margin of about 25% in 2025, not just because it sounds good saying 25 in 2025, but also because we can see that with the activities we have now launched, ALK can achieve these margins that we can expect from a company of our kind. We believe that these goals are realistic in the light of the market potential, which is great, and the many initiatives and activities that we have launched. All in all, we believe that the road has been paved, and we have a good sense of what it takes to get there. With our strategic plan, we decided to continue the course that we had set.
We had four main priorities for the year. We must succeed in North America. We must complete our clinical studies and commercialize the tablet portfolio. We need to mobilize people with allergies digitally so that they do something about their conditions. We have to continue to optimize our production and the way we operate in general. With these four aspects we delivered in the first part of our strategic period. With those goals, we also believe that we can deliver on our goals towards 2025. That's not enough in itself. There's also a time after that.
The life after 2025 must be filled with activities that we provide. In those activities, we have four major areas that we will invest in from now on to ensure growth going forward.
Regarding children, as mentioned earlier, we expect to complete the clinical trials in children with house dust mite allergy and tree pollen allergies in 2023, opening the door to full pediatric coverage in Europe and North America. To illustrate how important this is, I want to say that it's so important because by far, the largest group of tablet patients in the rapid growing Japanese market are under the age of 18. 75% of the patients are under the age of 18 in Japan. Of course, when we get the indications for children in Europe and North America, we open a great new market. A second initiative, which has been a long journey, is ongoing in China. It is the world's largest market for immunotherapy treatments of house dust mite allergies, particularly, and that's also where we focus.
Today, total sales are just under DKK 1 billion, with an annual growth in excess of 25%, but the potential is much greater. We are well underway expanding our sales force and all our market access activities, both to increase sales of our existing products based on injections, but also to ensure that we have the right people in place and cover China as well as possible, so that in 2024, when we can launch our tablet treatment, we will be ready. With the latest messages we got from the Chinese authorities in the latest waiver, we are well-placed. In 2021, we also entered into a partnership with Grand Pharma on our adrenaline pen, which will increase our footprint in China. The third initiative is to ensure a future in the long run is our adrenaline pen.
The aim is to submit a registration application to the FDA in America by 2024 at the latest. Here we're working in parallel on two projects, an internal development project and a partnership with the American biotech company, Windgap. We strongly believe that in 2024, we can then open the adrenaline pen market in the U.S. for us. The final focus area is food allergies. Here we're making use of our 20 years of experience in developing and commercializing tablets against respiratory allergies to combat food allergies. This is much needed. 2.5% of the world's population suffers from a food allergy, and for many, the fear of a severe allergic reaction is highly detrimental to quality of life. While there are only very few and not particularly effective treatment options available today.
We progressed well with preparations in 2021, receiving confirmation that our tablet technology is a very good point of departure for developing further. What we'll develop will be a vaccine against peanut allergies. This paves the way for initiating clinical phase I developments within a few months. These are the four focus areas where we're working strongly towards securing growth in the long term. Third, we can set ambitious targets for ALK. It is our goal to maintain high growth also going towards 2025, also including high earnings. We also have some long-term goals for sustainability.
As I said earlier, we want to make allergy treatments available many more places in the world, compared to today, and we're convinced that the shortest path to that goal is to create a business which is responsible and has a responsible connection between what we do and what our business targets are. For that reason, we have also established goals for the ESG efforts in areas of the greatest importance to ALK and our stakeholders. We have integrated sustainability targets into the remuneration of the Board of Management, and this means that ESG targets, like any other commercial and earnings targets, determine a portion of the remuneration to the Board of Management. Personally, and the Board of Directors are very happy with this. ALK needs to grow and help many more patients, but we have to do it in a responsible manner.
We must optimize our use of water, reduce energy consumption, increase recycling, limit waste. Of course, we need to shift to more renewable energy sources where possible. In other words, we will reduce ALK's climate and environmental footprint while we grow. The target is a 60% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2025 compared to our 2019 baseline. The target applies to so-called Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions, and we're in the process of making Scope 3 part of the future targets. A lot of work lies ahead of us still, though. We're on the right path, but we are not there yet. It's something we take very seriously, and we work intensively on these sustainability goals, and we discuss it often on the board meetings. Now a few things about dividends to shareholders.
We, as a board of directors, we want to continue the temporary suspension of dividends, which we introduced in 2018, and that is to support our growth. Now that I've just described how well we are doing, and we have shown strong growth and strong earnings increases, and we need to continue that so we can invest while things are going so well. Of course, we will continuously review the dividends policy, and of course, the goal is to resume distributing dividends, the sooner the better. For now, we need to ask our shareholders to remain patient a bit longer. While dividends have been suspended, it is the share price that must create value, and we have seen large growth in the share price.
From 2017 to the end of 2021, there has been an annual average return of 47%, and last year the share price increased by 37%. This year, unfortunately, the share price is languishing along with the rest of the share market and there's nothing in our development that can explain the lower share price because we have maintained growth and the positive development. The market is behaving the way the market is behaving. There's another thing the board of directors proposes today, and that is to split the shares. We want to have an attractive and liquid share that appeals to many investors. Therefore, we propose that we reduce the denomination of shares from 10 DKK to 0.5 DKK.
This will put many more shares into circulation at a considerably lower price, which will make the share more accessible to private investors. Now a few words about corporate governance. There are some things that should be mentioned. Last year, the Board of Directors held seven meetings compared to 11 in 2020. COVID and the strategic updates led to unusually intense meeting activity, particularly in 2020. One of the meetings we had was in June, where we had our two-day seminar, where we updated our strategic developments, and I just told you what we have planned. Apart from the meetings of the Board of Directors, the Audit Committee met five times, and the Remuneration and Nomination Committee met four times, while the Scientific Committee assembled three times. On top of that, there have been numerous meetings between the Chairmanship and the Board of Management.
As usual, we also conducted a self-evaluation of the Board of Directors at the end of the year, assisted by an external facilitator. The evaluation showed that the key areas identified in the previous self-evaluations have been satisfactorily followed up. The Board of Directors also has the necessary competencies, and the meetings are open, constructive, and focused on solutions. There's a good cooperation between Board of Directors and Board of Management. The Directors have also looked at the corporate governance guidelines from the Committee on Corporate Governance. One focus area of us has been to ensure that going forward, there will be a majority of independent members of the Board of Directors, and particularly in the committees. If everyone is elected as proposed by the Board of Directors, we will continue this work.
If we look at the 40 guidelines from the Committee, ALK complies to all of them, and I actually think that it's the first time this has happened. A review of the guidelines is available on our website, where you can also see the special remuneration report with a detailed description of the remuneration of the Board of Directors and the Board of Management. The remuneration for the board of directors is determined here at the AGM consisting of a fixed fee, while fees to the Board of Management are determined by the Board of Directors based on our remuneration policy. The Board of Management consists of several elements in their fees, a fixed salary, short-term and long-term incentives, and the usual benefits. It's mixed in from different things.
Last year, the total remuneration of the Board of Management increased 8%, to a total of DKK 37 million. There was a small rise in the fixed salaries of the four directors, but by far the largest share of the increase came as a result of ALK's good results, which resulted in bonus payouts. The Board of Directors had established a number of very ambitious targets, so it's very joyful for us to see that the Board of Management delivered on almost every parameter, and therefore their short-term bonus increased by DKK 2 million to DKK 12 million. Another indication of what a good year 2021 was for ALK. Looking at the outlook for this year, 2022, there are signs that we can continue our development and maybe even see even better results this year.
We expect growth in all sales regions again this year and higher earnings in line with our long-term ambitions. Revenue is expected to increase 8%-12% in local currencies, and tablet sales will continue to be the primary growth driver with expected sales growth of approximately 20% in tablets. We expect over 1 million patients will be receiving treatment with the tablets at the end of the year, which means that the full year's tablet sales will probably exceed DKK 2 billion this year. As for the rest of ALK's product portfolio, we anticipate it will be lower. EBITDA is expected to increase to DKK 625 million-DKK 725 million, even though we will spend more on research and development, and we will spend more money on sales and marketing, including the buildup in China.
We still expect earnings to grow, driven by higher sales, better margins, and higher efficiencies. COVID, unfortunately remains a factor, and the pandemic may cause fluctuations in sales. The overall geopolitical situation, of course, also deteriorated following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has triggered far-reaching sanctions, price rises on energy and raw materials and higher inflation. Nevertheless, we anticipate delivering on the announced forecast and achieving solid top-line growth and better earnings. Let me conclude this report by affirming that ALK is in a good position. The transformation of ALK, which was started in 2017, has been successful up to now. We are well on the way in the next phase in which we will deliver consistent double-digit growth and better earnings, while also laying the foundations for solid long-term growth. This involves children, China, adrenaline, and food allergies.
They all are growth accelerators in the long term. There are still challenges to overcome, such as getting tablet sales up in the U.S., and there's a lot of hard work ahead of us. But the big picture is that we are well on the way to attaining the targets we have set. We do what we say we will do. We execute steadily and consistently, thereby laying the foundation for a larger, stronger, and more robust ALK. I would like to thank the Board of Management once again. This includes all the managers and all employees for your dedicated and strong effort in the years that have passed. A great thank you for your enormous contribution to our progress and your willingness to adapt during the pandemic.
With these words, I ask the shareholders to approve the annual report and the allocation of profit and to adopt the report submitted by the Board of Directors and Board of Management, and that you also grant this charge to the Board of Directors. Thank you.
Thank you very much to the Chairman for this report on the activities for 2021, for presenting the annual report and the remuneration report. For the proposal for allocation of profits. Before I open the debate, I need to inform you that the annual report has been signed by the board of directors and the executive management, and that it has been signed by the company auditors with no remarks and with an unqualified auditor's report that you can see on pages 46-50 in the annual report. As mentioned, the board proposes that no dividend be paid out for the financial year 2021. With those words, I open the debate. We already have one speaker on the list, and that is the pension fund ATP, represented by Klaus Werner Müller. The floor is yours.
Thank you for the floor. My name is Klaus Werner Müller. I represent ATP. I would like to start by thanking you for your report. 2021 was another good year for ALK.
Top line growth was 12%, led by the growth of 29% in the tablet sales. Tablet sales now constitutes 45% of revenue. We also had good growth in earnings. The EBIT margin, which was negative in 2019, is now positive with 7.5% in 2021, and the goal of 25% by 2025 now seems to be something you can achieve. The 25% in the EBIT margin is of course an important goal, but it shouldn't overshadow the top line growth in the years leading up to or beyond 2025. You need to maintain your investments in R&D, and you need to make sure that you have new products that you can ensure long-term growth. I'm sure that the everyday management shares these perspectives.
The projected tablets for allergies against peanuts are on its way now, and it's important that you keep up the steam when it comes to marketing in order to make sure that you increase sales in different markets, not least in the U.S. ALK still hasn't reached its breakthrough when it comes to the tablet sales in the U.S., and that has of course also been impacted by the COVID situation. Management has KPIs in the short term and the long-term incentive program, which focuses on success in North America and the slit tablet sales also in North America. Thus, there's a lot of focus on this from the board of directors as well as from the executive management. My question is therefore, what can ALK do in order to increase tablet sales in North America? Are there any new initiatives planned for 2022?
An interesting opportunity that has gotten closer now is the sales of tablets against house dust mite allergies in China. On the 3rd of March , 2022, you sent out a company announcement saying that the Chinese authorities gave you the opportunity to send in your registration application without completing your phase III trials. This potential from Chinese patients and the approval that you need can be collected after that. The Chinese market for house dust mite allergies is expected to be DKK 900 million growing each year. The market potential for these tablets in China is huge, and I would therefore like some more information about when you can expect a product launch in this market and whether this will be done by ALK alone, or whether you will team up with other partners.
We have had meetings with your ESG experts who confirmed that you have started a good development. You have been a bit behind on the ESG front, but in past years, you have caught up, and I would like to know whether you have plans for improvement also in the coming years. Thank you for that. I would also like to say that I'm glad you have a new possible candidate for an independent member of the board in Alan Main. He has good experiences from Roche and Bayer and other companies. Alan Main thus has understanding about the sales of over-the-counter products and other experience that can benefit ALK. That way it seems like a good match.
Finally, I would like to once again thank you for these impressive results in 2021, and I would also like to thank your employees as well as management. Finally, let me wish you the best of luck with your challenges in the coming years. Thank you very much.
Thank you to ATP and Mr. Klaus Werner Müller. There were a number of questions and comments, and I give the floor to CEO Carsten Hellmann.
Thank you very much to Klaus Werner Müller from ATP for these questions and the words of praise. We all appreciate that in ALK after these difficult years, but still with good results. Let me start with China. We expect a product launch in 2024 in China. We expect that we will carry out the launch and the marketing ourselves. We have already begun the investments.
A year ago, we had 50 employees in China, and we have started building our infrastructure with compliance, finance, and a new director over there. Now we have 120 employees, and in three years, we expect to be about 250 employees in China. We do believe we can make good progress in China, and we do believe we have the right and competent team over there. Of course, we can't expect that this will go fast. We need patience here, but we have patience, and we believe that China will become an important market for ALK. When it comes to the U.S., it's true that seven or eight years ago, we expected that ALK could only become a success if we managed to succeed in the U.S.
We have now shown that ALK is a strong company more generally. It's true that there's a great potential in the U.S., but the thing is that physicians in the U.S. really don't have any financial incentive to give their patients tablets because they earn so much money on injections. Out of the 30 million patients who need immunotherapy in the U.S., only 3% of them or three million of them receive the treatment today. We work on many digital activities and initiatives in order to improve this development, as the chairman also said, in order to make sure that in the longer term, we reach these patients who should have immunotherapy. It's not like there's any quick fix in the U.S. This is going to be a long effort, but we will get there.
I would also like to thank you for your comments about ESG. This is something that we have made a lot of efforts to improve, and we really put our heart into it, and we will continue to do so also in the future. Thank you.
Thank you, Carsten Hellmann, for the response to ATP. Does anybody else want the floor under these items on the agenda? That does not seem to be the case, so I will conclude that the AGM has approved the annual report, approved the report, granted discharge to the board of directors and board of management, adopted the remuneration report for 2021, and also the resolution on the allocation of profits. That will appear from the minutes of the AGM, and this concludes items one to four on the agenda, which brings us to the fifth item on the agenda, adoption of the remuneration to the board of directors for the present year. Specifically, the board of directors proposes that remuneration to the board of directors should be increased from DKK 300,000 to DKK 350,000 in 2022.
DKK 350 thousand is the base fee for ordinary directors. The Vice Chair receives twice the base fee, DKK 700 thousand, and the Chair shall receive three times the base fee, i.e. DKK 1,050 thousand. The Board of Directors further proposes that supplementary remuneration to members of Remuneration Nomination Committee and the Scientific Committee should remain unchanged at 100 thousand, and that the supplementary remuneration for the chairman of the two committees should remain unchanged at DKK 150 thousand. The Board of Directors further proposes that supplementary remuneration to the members of the Audit Committee should be increased to DKK 125 thousand, and that supplementary remuneration to the chairman of the Audit Committee should be increased to DKK 187,500. I now open the debate.
Does anybody want the floor regarding this point? That does not seem to be the case, so I also conclude that this proposal has been adopted. Next item on the agenda is item six, election of the Chairman of the Board of Directors. Again, it's proposed that Anders Hedegaard is reelected as Chairman of the Board. You can see his CV in appendix one to the convening notice. I want to ask whether there are any other candidates for the post of Chairman, or does anybody want the floor to this point? That's not the case. Anders Hedegaard has been reelected as Chairman of the Board of Directors for a period of one year. That brings us to item seven on the agenda, election of Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors.
The directors propose reelection of Lene Skole as Vice Chairman of the Board. Again, you can see her CV from the appendix, in the appendix of the convening notice. Are there any other candidates, or does anybody want the floor to this point? That's not the case either. Lene Skole has been reelected as Vice Chairman of the Board. Brings us to item eight, election of other members of the Board of Directors. Here I give the floor to the Chairman, Anders Hedegaard, to motivate the proposed candidates and who has other comments on the candidates.
Thank you very much, and thank you for reelecting me as chairman of the board. According to the article, articles of association, all members of the board of directors are up for re-election every year. You have already kindly re-elected the chairman and vice chairman, for which I thank you. In addition, we propose re-election of Lars Holmqvist. Perhaps you could stand up. Jakob Riis. Gitte Aabo. Bertil Lindmark. I can't ask him to stand, or I could, but he's with us on the webcast. You have to make do with the picture of him as you can see on this slide. We also propose the election of a new member, Alan Main, and I will introduce him shortly. All of the candidates are also presented in Appendix 1 to the invitation.
Just a few additional remarks, because when we compose the board of directors, we try to ensure a broad managerial, financial, pharmaceutical, and production-related competencies, so that we ensure that the board of directors is well-equipped to be a good partner for the board of managers and, of course, serve the interest of our shareholders. We, of course, believe that all of the candidates proposed meet these criteria. Competencies and experience must be in order, but we also look at diversity in the board of directors. Before today's general meeting, 33% of members elected at the general meeting are women, and although the percentage will fall somewhat with the election of Alan Main, we are still very close to our goal of 30% representation. With the inclusion of employee-elected members, women will comprise 40% of the board after today.
That is four out of the 10 members. Three of the members elected by the general meeting were born outside Denmark, and there are also three of us working in global businesses. This dimension is also important in discussing diversity, which is important to us at ALK. Moving on, we also propose the election of a new member, Alan Main, and I would like to thank ATP for their comments because that is exactly why we have proposed Alan Main. He has been nominated because of his many years of experience in Bayer, Roche, and Sanofi, where Alan was Executive Vice President and a member of the executive committee. We're thankful that Alan has agreed to be a candidate here, and we've already worked with him as an observer on the board, and we have benefited greatly from his knowledge and his active contribution to the board.
Born in 1963, Alan Main is British and currently a senior consultant working with the impact investment platform, Bamboo Capital Partners. He will bring a unique knowledge of the entire consumer healthcare universe and comprehensive knowledge of digital marketing, and these are areas in which we are keen to improve. These proposals for re-elections and new election also means that we will have four independent members, while three members will be non-independent in the corporate governance sense due to their affiliations with the main shareholder, the Lundbeck Foundation. If the general meeting can adopt this proposal, we will restore what we see as the right balance. Furthermore, I need to mention the members elected by employees. There are three of these. Katja Barnkob, Nanna Carlson, and Johan Smedsrud.
They were elected for four years in 2019 and are not up for election today, but they do a magnificent job that I would like to acknowledge here at the general meeting. We have a good cooperation between employee-elected members and general meeting-elected members. I therefore recommend Lars Holmqvist, Jakob Riis, Gitte Aabo, and Bertil Lindmark for re-election and Alan Main to be elected as a new member. Perhaps I could ask Alan Main to stand up. I now give the floor back to the chairman of the meeting.
Thank you, Chair. The CVs and competencies of the proposed members of the board are also clear in the appendix of the convening notice. I want to ask if there are any other proposed candidates. That is not the case. I can conclude that all the candidates proposed by the board of directors are elected. Congratulations to all of you. That brings us to item nine, appointment of auditor, and we propose a re-election of PwC, and that is in accordance with a recommendation from the Audit Committee that has not been influenced by third parties and has not been driven by any agreement with a third party that could restrict the choice of the annual general meeting. Are there any other candidates for auditor? That's not the case. PwC has been re-elected as the auditor of the company. Congratulations to PwC.
That brings us to item 10 on the agenda. That, of course, always covers proposals from the board of directors, and there are four proposals this year. First, 10A, renewal of the board's powers to increase the share capital. 10B is amendment of the denomination of the shares. 10C, amendment of Article 6.4 of the Articles of Association, and 10D, authorization to the chairman of the meeting. The first proposal, as mentioned, is renewal of the board's powers to increase share capital. In Article 4a of the Articles of Association, there are two authorizations to the board, and both of them expire on the 11th of March, 2023. That might be before next year's AGM. The board proposes that the authorization is extended or renewed to be valid until the 15th of March, 2027. There are some changes to Article 4a.
You can read that in the convening notice. You can also see it in the proposed new articles of association that have been available since the 21st of February. We need a two-thirds majority for this to be adopted and at least two-thirds of the share capital represented here today. That's all in accordance with the Danish Companies Act. With that, I open the debate to see whether anyone has any comments for this. I don't see any comments, so I conclude that the proposal has been adopted. That brings us to 10B, amendment of the denomination of shares. The board proposes the denomination of A, AA, and B shares in the company be amended. It's to be changed from 10 DKK to 0.5 DKK per share multiples thereof.
This is because the board of directors may want to undertake a share split which can make the share more accessible to private investors. This is also given the positive development in the share price in previous year. The share split is expected to take place before the end of March 2022, and the split would be in the ratio one to 20, so each share of a nominal of DKK 10 will be split into 20 shares of a value of DKK 0.5. If this is adopted, it will not be valid straight away, but before the end of March. This will also require a change to the articles of association. Again, it has been sent out with a convening notice and been available on the website. Again, we need two-thirds majority for this proposal.
Again, I open the debate and ask whether anybody wants the floor. Again, that is not the case. This proposal is also amended. Thank you for that. 10C is an amendment of Article 6.4 in the Articles of Association. The Board of Directors proposes to change the deadline for casting postal votes so that it's in line with the practice in ALK, where shareholders must cast their postal votes at least the day before the general meeting. That would mean a change in Article 6.4. Again, I refer you to the convening notice and what has been available on the website of the company. Again, we need a two-thirds majority. I want to ask if there are any comments under this item. That is not the case. I conclude that the proposal has been adopted.
That brings us to the last proposal, 10D. That's authorization to the chairman of the meeting, i.e., me. The board of directors proposes that the general meeting authorizes the chairman of the meeting with power of delegation to report what has been decided here today to the Danish Business Authority. Does anybody want the floor under this item? Not the case. Thank you for supporting this proposal. That brings us to item 11, any other business. That's the last item on the agenda. This is where you have the chance as a shareholder to have the floor, but you can't make any proposals. Again, I want to ask whether anybody would like the floor under any other business. It's your last chance today. Nobody wants the floor, so we have come to the end of our agenda.
I would like to thank you all for a good meeting. All I need to do now is to step down as chairman of the AGM and give the floor to the Chairman of the Board of Directors to conclude today's meeting.
Thank you very much. On behalf of the board of directors, I would like to thank you all for being with us today. Also, a warm thank you for those of you following along on the webcast. Thank you for the chairman of the meeting for navigating us safely through today's agenda. It was not a large task for you to control the debate, but we had a good flow and a good general meeting today. What is left for me to say is only to wish you all a good and safe trip back home. Take care of yourselves, even if COVID is almost over. We look forward to seeing you again next year. Thank you very much.