Morning. We're delighted to be with you again. We're really pleased those of you who have come to see us. We're gonna show you another short video, somewhat different, and then we'll move into the AGM.
We're actually living up through rebound with the new trends, with the new local clienteles. Those are huge opportunities. We need to be really there to make sure we welcome those new trends and ambition.
We're the most diverse hotel operator on Earth.
That makes Accor, let's say, very specific in terms of development is our extensive portfolio of brands.
Ennismore is a good example. All those brands collected, gathered between Hoxton, Gleneagles, Mama Shelter, 25hours, 21c, Delano, I can go on and on. I can tell you, we are two years ahead of any of our peers.
We have a concept called Workspitality, in which we use our hotels in order to provide solutions for remote workers. We've got a strong brand, which is ALL, and we want to make sure that we capture as much as possible of our loyal customer business.
We need to make sure that our guests have a fabulous experience. If you look at audacity and innovation, that mean that the world of tomorrow will be simply extraordinary. 100% of the success of Accor is in the hands of individual person.
We want our people to feel limitless, to be limitless.
What I want is to make sure that the working environment of Accor, whether it is in any headquarters or any hotels on this planet, people, women feel safe and protected. We're gonna be so much stronger, so much better.
Probably the best decision we've made collectively is the ALL Heartist Fund. We set it aside 25% of the planned dividend, which was EUR 70 million, only to the benefit of those people impacted by COVID. The future is about sustainable growth.
We are changing everything. We want to future-proof our hotels to become net zero emission by 2050.
We have to preserve this planet greater. We need to make sure that the single-use plastic item, we're gonna be getting rid of them as soon as possible.
What we wanna do as well is make sure that our hotels are at the core of their neighborhoods by nurturing the nature and engaging with the full community.
Daring is our driver. Emotion is our drivers. The adventure is only beginning.
Well, it's strange to say that the adventure only just beginning. It dates back 55 years. We're gonna extend it. It's a very fine adventure, so I'd like to call the meeting to order, AGM of Accor on the 2021. This is an important moment for us 'cause, of course, we like to tell you what we do, share that, and to try and onboard as many of you as possible in this room. It's a moment during which you'll be able to speak, and so there'll be a Q&A session before we close the meeting. We've been waiting for that for three years. We haven't seen you during that period. We've stopped the virtual mode.
It's your opportunity during the 80 minutes that we'll be able to interact together. Over to Besma, who will deliver the legal formalities before we move to other matters. Thank you, Sébastien. Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to this general meeting. I'm delighted to see you again after two years of in-camera session. I'll begin by forming the bureau. Mr. Sébastien Bazin, chairman of the meeting, Mr. Kamal Ghazali, representing Qatar Investment Authority, Mr. Tareq Fontanel, representing Kingdom Hotel Investments. Mr. Ghazali and Fontanel will act as scrutineers. Duties that are devolved to shareholders present representing in their own capacity as well as proxies, the greatest number of votes. Having agreed to that, I will act as meeting secretary. As every year, this AGM is broadcast by video live on the internet.
There are cameras in the room. The video will also be available on the company website. Although this meeting is no longer being held in camera, we've decided to maintain open a dedicated platform allowing shareholders to put their questions directly in writing. The Bureau, Sébastien said, will devote the last 30 minutes of this meeting to respond to questions sent in earlier by shareholders for the meeting as well as those put live. There was a notice of a meeting published in the mandatory bulletin of legal notices on the eighth of April and second of May. Notice of meeting was also published on the second of May. Made available on the desk all the documents and reports for the meeting as per law, insofar as they were made available to shareholders.
In order to allow more time for discussion, we would ask that you take them as read. Documents for which shareholders have, as they were made available at the head office of the company. Same document sent out to shareholders who asked for them. As regards the attendance sheet, it's being tallied, but over a quarter of the shares making up the capital is represented, and therefore the meeting may take valid decisions. Let me remind you of the agenda. This meeting item for the ordinary meeting as follows: approval of reports and parent company and consolidated financial statements fiscal year ended December 31st, 2021. Appropriation of earnings FY 2021. Appointments of Madame Asma Abdulrahman Al-Khulaifi, Mr. Ugo Arzani and Madame Hélène Auriol Pottier as board members of the company. Renewals of the term Madame Qiong'Er Jiang, Monsieur Nicolas Sarkozy, Madame Isabelle Simon, Mr.
Sarmad Zok. Approval of the report on compensation of all executive officers in respect of FY ended December 31st, 2021. Approval of fixed, variable, and exceptional items of total compensation paid during the course of 2021 to Mr. Sébastien Bazin as Chairman and CEO. Approval of the compensation policy of the Chairman and CEO in respect of FY 2022. Approval of the compensation policy of board members in respect of FY 2022. Approval of related party agreement. Authorization to the board to trade in the company share. Delegation to the board to issue equity warrants to be allocated freely to shareholders in the event of an offer on the company's shares. Powers for formalities.
The extraordinary meetings for authorization to grant free shares to employees and executives of the company, capping of the number of shares to be granted free of charge to executive officers, and delegation to the board to have capital increase with deletion of the preferential subscription right to members of company savings plans of ordinary shares giving access to the company share. The company has received no draft resolution on the part of shareholders. That's the end of formalities. Thanks for your attention. Thank you. We'll immediately get down to business with Mr. Jean-Jacques Morin on the financial results of your company. Good morning, one and all. A year ago to the day when I was delivering the same presentation in this very room, there was no one in the audience.
There's one situation that I prefer, I'll let you guess. We're really pleased to be able to interact physically. I'm going to review with you the 2021 financials, and I'll give you a glimpse of what's happening into Q1 2022. On the 2021 results, just a summary page with the highlights and key figures for 2021. Two key message, a significant improvement in trading. In the operational execution, we've been very stringent because we outperformed the target set both in terms of P&L, cash generation business. To go in greater detail in the activities, there are two KPIs here for the business. We have the RevPAR, revenue per available room, and then the growth of the hotel network. You can see that the RevPAR has improved sequentially month after month since April 2021 through December 2021.
Month after month, we recovered on the RevPAR. That's really a metric indicating the health of revenue. Second remarkable achievement in 2021, in spite of a challenging situation throughout the world, that we continue to grow our hotel network. Our hotel network grew 3%. That's the second key metric of the operational business of a hotel group. Group revenue is up 34% versus FY 2020 on a like-for-like basis. As to operational excellence, back to EBITDA in positive territory at EUR 22 million, having lost just over EUR 400 million last year on the same metric.
Recurring free cash flow -EUR 246 million, the notable points the second half of the year. Recurring free cash flow was back in positive territory, so we generated cash in the second half of the year, reflecting the gradual improvement month after month of our business. Final point on the savings plan in 2021. The reset savings ended up at EUR 110 million, much better than the guidance given that was at EUR 70 million. That's basically a summary of events in terms of KPIs and how we were able to execute. A bit more granularity on the network KPI, cost to grow the network in our business is key to the health of our activity.
What we see reflected clearly in the right-hand chart is that year after year, crisis after crisis, our network, that's to say the number of rooms we operate, has grown. You see the blue bar network of 778,000 rooms. That's a clear metric if we wanna transform it. Not in number of rooms, but number of hotels. We're actually opening one hotel every day. As to the geographic split, second half of the chart here, we got good resilience in regions 'cause the percentages, both of network but also pipeline, the future network, remain consistent by geography. Additional information, I said that we had a network that grew through 2021 by 3%. Our target for 2022 is growth of 3.5% of that same network. If we now move to the P&L.
Well, the good news is that net profit EUR 85 million, so back into positive territory after a loss that was colossal in 2020. We had almost EUR 2 billion in losses in 2020. That's the last one on the table. First, you have the EBITDA in the following lines. There are, of course, two items that I just wanted to bring to your attention. One is our share of earnings consolidated at equity, AccorInvest. Although it's still posting a loss, AccorInvest has halved its loss, EUR 578 million down to EUR 273 million. That's a reflection of the renewal of the hotel business in the Europe region. AccorInvest is essentially a European, almost totally a European activity.
The second line is non-recurring product proceeds and charge EUR 524 million. That's the result of part of our stake in Huazhu. Huazhu, one of the main Chinese players, one of the main two Chinese hotel operators. In fact, what we did, return on investment made back in 2015 in investing in Huazhu. That's an 8x money multiple on that investment. Once again, that reflects the good strategic decisions made way back in 2015. We see a significant number posted on our P&L. Moving more to the balance sheet here. I'm trying to keep this simple. The balance sheet is really important.
It's one of the reasons why this crisis, we're able to continue to step back and take the right decisions, the smart decisions over a mid- long-term strategy, 'cause we didn't have the worries that certain companies had to be strapped for cash during the crisis. We did see that our RevPAR - 60% year, - 46% year two, when I say that RevPAR is a KPI of revenue. There are not many companies that continue to take the right decision when their revenue plummets by 60% or 40%. This balance sheet is important, something we work every year. What we did this year is actually interesting in two respects. We rescheduled the debt. We keep the same debt, but we just push it back over time.
To do that mechanically, systematically, we renegotiate new debt on the markets. It went very well, markets that weren't that simple for the hotel industry. In this bond issue of EUR 700 million is the fact that it's SLB, sustainability-linked bond. We'll talk to you all about what we do with sustainability. Sustainability-linked bond is really just the cost is linked to the company's ability to comply with its ESG commitments. This SLB, sustainability-linked bond, is a first for us. It's actually not widely practiced in the market. Very well-received. It was oversubscribed 3.5 times.
That reflects Accor's pulling power as a group, people believing in the rebound, also the fact that our ESG strategies are strategies that people believe in. Moving on to the next slide, just a brief summary on Q1. In fact, Q1 2022 really just confirms what I just said about 2021. We see a RevPAR that basically doubles between Q1 2021 and Q1 2022, so revenue continues to rise. Network growth coming in at 2.5%, so revenue at the end of the day, that's grown by 85%, constant scope and currency. The dynamic link to that is strong domestic demand that we'll find in Accor in 2022 will be back to the level of revenue and RevPAR at 2019.
Still a bit lagging behind internationally 'cause international means that planes need to be available and countries reopen. We'll wait till next year or the following year to have 100% of our international business back. All this with prices that are today above those of 2019. In fact, good pricing power for us to ensure that our products remain attractive. Then of course, share price performance with everything I told you about, hotel industry revenues way below what we generated in 2019 and other industries that didn't face the same difficulties. We have a share price that June 2021 was down.
What we do see, however, on this slide is that since the start of the year, when most global indices are down, French market, here you got the SBF 120, but the same goes for all the foreign NYSE, NASDAQ. We basically see that Accor's share price is gradually trending upwards. Revenue will be back and on the back of that, earnings and the share price, we must just continue to do what's right. Our strategies as set long time back, and all this will pay off. I'll hand over to Sébastien. Right on time.
Thank you, Jean-Jacques. We're going to move on to another aspect which is not financial, but just as interesting. Five or six notions that we keep reminding people of that we talked with you about today. The first of them is, has been mentioned by Jean-Jacques, one we should be very happy about. It's the fact that people are just as eager to travel as ever before. Possibly even, that desire is even stronger than we would have anticipated five or six months ago. For those of you who haven't traveled yet, now's the time. You have to be careful because you have to hurry up. Prices are rising. It's an important point from our perspective, because we have lost a lot of money. It's been a very difficult crisis for the group.
The last two years haven't been exactly a nightmare, but we have been in a neutral gear, so to speak. A lot of people, including Accor, have found these times very difficult. We have our employees back doing the work that they love, and it's the time for you to enjoy a culture of food that you will enjoy. Be careful, hotels are very full. In fact, completely full this summer in an awful lot of destinations in Europe. The second point is not in any way in contradiction with the previous point. That is, at a time when people are traveling and driving and taking trains and planes, we have to be true to our values in terms of preserving our planet. It's more than a duty.
It's actually an opportunity, as I see it. It's an opportunity for us to show the world that we are perfectly capable of developing a rural community for the greater benefit of the people living there. This interaction between travelers, employees, and the local community is steeped in method. Now, living and working from just about anywhere. Well, we've been hearing about this for quite some time. In fact, I was one of the people who were very skeptical, even negative about how many people could actually work from home. This was before COVID. Maybe some people felt I was a little old-fashioned. Maybe people felt that, you know, that people would be playing tennis rather than work when they were at home on Fridays.
However, there is no doubt at this point in time that after two years of this, working remotely, people did a lot of work. People have been on time for all our Webex, Teams, and Zoom meetings, all our remote meetings, of which there were quite a few during the day. They're very tiring, but they were important meetings. Now I believe exactly the contrary. This ability to work and from anywhere is an opportunity for those who can do it, but it is certainly not a hindrance to our group. However, it does have quite a number of consequences for, hospitality, the hospitality sector, because there are a lot of people who aren't actually working here in this, building on Fridays and Sundays. They're the two days, Fridays and Mondays, I should say. They're the two days where people work most from home.
This ability to leave the building on Thursday evening and come back to Tuesday evening and spend their time working from a hotel, I hope on Fridays. The British call this workation. It's a combination of a vacation and work. The fourth point is new booking patterns. Now, one of our employees called Grégoire Champetier, he was head of marketing six or seven years ago, a wonderful chap. Grégoire really surprised me seven years ago when he said, "You know, Sébastien, the work in future will be, it'll be a work of pleasure. It's business combined with pleasure." You'll find this word in every hospitality company in the world. Did he actually invent it? I hope he did. He really surprised me with that idea six years ago.
However, the fourth idea is the fact that people are now capable of spending more for a better experience. I don't know how long this is going to last. Some people were actually able to save some money during the two years of lockdown, where there were a lot of financial support, a lot of money that wasn't spent while we were in lockdown. Will this last? I'm not sure. These are difficult times from the financial perspective. Of course, we have a lot of global events coming up. They're very different to the events we had 15 years ago. They're also very much involved in preserving our planet, very much involved in diversity and working in favor of the underprivileged. We in Accor have been very involved in reimagining the world of tomorrow.
Now, if you want to look at a graph, I'm going to do this nice and slowly because it's probably the slide that really shows what we have to deal with. On the left-hand side of the screen, you have business travel. These are people who stay in a hotel for business reasons. You see that there are two sides. On the left-hand side, you have what we call international business travel. People coming from Microsoft in Seattle to work in Paris, or somebody working with IBM in Paris, traveling and staying in a hotel in Singapore. These are cross-continental travelers, people who are traveling long distances for business. If you look at the colors, look at the pale blue and the red.
There aren't any real hopes that international travel will get back to the level it was at in 2019, as 2019 was the level we had in 2019. 2024, which is still a long way away, we expect to still be 20% down on the figure for 2019. This is in international business travel. Now, we expected this eighteen months ago. Just imagine yourselves in the shoes of somebody in Seattle who wants to meet a client in Paris. Probably the first time he'll be meeting or she will be meeting this particular client. Obviously, they will want that first meeting to be held by Zoom, Webex or Teams.
If it's not they themselves, it'll be their CEO or CFO who's saying, "Be that as it may, get in touch with them on Zoom, and if you feel this is going to work out, well, then maybe we will look at a trip to Paris." It's a matter of efficiency, quality of life, but efficiency too. Travel is tiring. I still feel that international business travel will not be back to where it was for quite some time. One of my peers called Chris Nassetta, who's the head of Hilton, says exactly the opposite. He's, "You're wrong. International business travel will pick up very rapidly." I hope he's right and I'm wrong. Now, to the right of that left-hand chart, you have domestic business travel.
These are trips that are less than three hours from home, so you stay on the same continent. A person traveling from Amsterdam to Paris or from Lille to Madrid. Now, the situation is rosier. In 2022, that's the pale blue, we expect to be 10% down on the situation we had in 2019, but we expect to be back in the black in 2023. Now, this chart was drawn up in January or February, and I have to admit that I'm hoping that as of the end of this year, we will actually be back above that zero mark. We'll be back in the black. We felt for the last three or four months that anywhere that's two, three hours away is working.
A lot of people are coming from Madrid and Amsterdam, and I'm very positive about the fact that this will be back in a positive territory. Now, on the bottom of the slide, 20%-40%. That was 60% of your, the group's revenue. This was business travel accounted for 60% of our revenue in 2019. On the right-hand side, we have not business travel, but leisure travel, which accounted for 40% of our revenue in 2019. Well, these 40% are going to increase because there are more and more people traveling for leisure purposes. It will become more complicated because, as I said just a few minutes ago, in six months' time, we won't be able to tell the difference between leisure and business because people are combining the two.
As I said, for the purposes of efficiency and for their own pleasure, they will be blending business and leisure, leaving on a Thursday evening or Wednesday evening, coming back the following Tuesday, ensuring that the weekend is as much leisure as it is business. If you look at this slide, what you'll see is that the leisure travelers on the international side, China is closed, Japan's not back in Europe, Korea is not back in Europe, but we have our Americans and the South Americans. Those of you who've been in Paris over the last few weeks, you will have noticed that a lot of travelers, a lot of international travelers are back. However, the pale blue for 2022 is still down 19%. We felt it was still negative in 2023.
No, the red bar will be positive. As for the domestic leisure travelers, the situation is much rosier because as of this year, our domestic leisure travelers will be spending more than they did in 2019. That's the segmentation. It keeps evolving every week. However, it's evolving in the right direction, becoming increasingly positive in all categories, with the exception of international business travelers. Landmark events of 2021. Well, the desire to travel, we notice back in 2021, prices are back where they were in 2019. This is probably something of a windfall, but true, and then we are pushing our hotel owners to increase their prices for two reasons. Firstly, because they suffered as badly as we did. Quite a few have cash difficulties, so they absolutely need to reinstate or restore their cash situation.
Operating costs on a hotel are very inflationary, not just wages. Wages are increasing and the cost of energy is rising. If you want the hotel owners to have margins on a par with 2019, the only way to achieve that is to ensure that end customers accept to pay a little more, to give them the margins they need to manage their operating costs. That. Will that be the case over the next six months? I don't know if that's going to endure throughout the year. I don't know. An appetite for new experiences. More and more people traveling are going to increasingly isolated places.
Places that are close to nature, close to the Alps, close to towns and cities we didn't know well, because they want to discover the world, because they want to be away from the madding crowd, because they want to discover what they haven't known. They've been locked up for all too long. All very interesting for Accor, because it so happens that we operate in quite a lot of places that may not have been attractive three or four years ago, but are now becoming attractive because of this new desire to travel. As for opportunities, well, we've signed quite a few large contracts. The first of these will be at the end of the year. This is the World Cup in Qatar. It's not on this slide. Then there's the Rugby World Cup, which will be held in France in 2023.
The Paris Olympic Games in 2024. We're one of the major sponsors. We are doing quite a lot in car rentals with Sixt, a large airline company called Qantas, with whom we work quite a lot in Australia. Eight out of ten Australians have a Qantas and Accor cross-loyalty card. Eight out of ten. The number of other things, Ennismore. We'll be talking about Ennismore in the future. This is a new holding company that brings together 14 lifestyle brands, hotels, and you saw the film on Ennismore. I'm sure you know at least one of those brands because you have almost certainly stayed or at least had a cup of coffee or spaghetti in one of these in Mama Shelter, not very far. It's never very far.
Mama Shelter, this was the Trigano family that set this up 15 years ago, and it's going extremely well. It's the wind in their sails and a lot of new hotels being opened. The next one will be in Dubai, but there's The Hoxton, Delano, Mondrian. We also have a partner in London, Sovereign fund , who took a 33% stake in the subsidiary. This is an excellent venture. We're ahead of the pack, ahead of the world, ahead of our competitors. There's a wonderful brand with, as I say, a lot of tailwinds. Very ambitious. One of the new brands is Emblems, a superb brand. You know, we launched MGallery quite a few years ago. This is in a different segment.
It's people with very large luxury hotels who do not want to lose their brand, but who would like to join our central booking system, our loyalty system, where they can keep their assets, their brands, their hotels, but use our booking channels. At the bottom of the entrance, you'll see a little mention saying that this hotel is part of the Emblems Collection. Of course, we have great ambitions for a wonderful brand called the Orient Express. A lot of you will know the Orient Express. That's very much synonymous with travel. Agatha Christie travel, Baccarat, Guerlain, Lalique. A wonderful brand for which we've joined forces with the French railways. We have a hotel in Rome and Venice, soon one in Istanbul. We have a partnership launching trains on secondary tracks in Italy with La Dolce Vita.
This is really the start of an extraordinary adventure. A few pictures now of a few of six hotels, whether they're emblematic or not, I don't know, but six hotels that we've had more difficulty than with others. Fairmont Century Plaza is in Los Angeles, 400 rooms. It's a huge building positioned right at the heart of Beverly Hills. That was completed after three and a half years of work. I was there only 3 years ago. 25hours is in Dubai. Probably the most innovative hotel that I haven't been to see for the last 25 years. This is one of the Ennismore brands devised by Christoph Hoffmann, an Austrian German who has, I think, crossed all the codes in materials and objects. It's surprising.
It's you feel very happy in this world of the future. It's doing extremely well, and it's something of a revolution in Dubai, where there are a lot of other hotels. Mövenpick is in Australia. This is the first time we'll have opened a Mövenpick in the Pacific area. JO&JOE is another Ennismore brand, a very accessible brand, one right beside us here in Porte de Sèvres. This is something we did in partnership with IKEA. That's near their head office. It's their building, so we took part of their head office to open a JO&JOE. Of course, we have a new design for Novotel and for ibis. Now, what are we doing in terms of solidarity? I love this group for many reasons. There is maybe one that's more important than all others.
It's the fact that, my goodness, this group is a very passionate group in many ways, but it's passionate in the noble way. This is a group. I hate when you are a spectator of your own life, but Accor is not a spectator. When you open up your eyes, we try to help, we try to take part, we try to contribute, we try to reassure. We have a mechanism we set up because I see my directors, the directors of the board right in front of me here. You will probably meet them as you leave the room. It so happens that our board of directors last March 20th or 21st of 2020, they took a very innovative, generous, and important decision.
That was the fact that at that board meeting, we decided together that we simply couldn't pay out the dividend we planned for 2021, which was EUR 170 million. We couldn't pay it out because we were at the very start of a pandemic, and that very same day, we decided to shut down all our hotels seven days after the board meeting. We were embarking on a major pandemic. France went into lockdown, I think, on the 28th or 29th of March. At that board meeting, when we decided to shut down hotels, that was a very tough decision, even a very unfair decision. It certainly had a huge impact on our 270,000 employees, because whether you know it or not, in a lot of our countries, our employees are paid by the week.
They still are in the US. They're paid by the week rather than by the month, unlike a lot of Western European countries. When you decide to shut down hotels on the first of April, we knew that a lot of countries or governments would not have the means to subsidize employees who would not be paid from the seventh of April, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, South America or Asia. We'll talk about this later on, I'll be very brief. The decision was taken to allocate 25% of the dividend, 70% into a fund that we call the ALL Heartist Fund. Heartist is a name that we mentioned before. It's something that all our employees in the group have in common. It's a contraction of heart and skills.
We allocated EUR 70 million for, I think it's, if you want to look at it's the equivalent of two football stadiums, 170,000 people. Each of the people in those stadiums received EUR 200-EUR 300 overall. The goal was very clear that this money must be for people who were suffering, people who were not receiving subsidies, who didn't have means, and who needed to access health care for themselves or their family, or who needed access to food. Well, I'm extremely proud of the fact that the group was able to do this, and I'd like to thank our board of directors who have never once for one second regretted that decision.
One day, I don't know how we'll go about it, but one day we will probably share all the letters, all the photographs we have received from people in Chile, Thailand, Nigeria or elsewhere. That decision in itself really stands for who we have been for the last 55 years and hopefully for the next 40 years or more. On a very different note, it's also very much who we are. I think it's important to say that Accor had to take part, had to become involved in Ukraine. Well, we did that quite naturally with the same people as we have in the ALL Heartist Fund. Well, we have seven hotels in Ukraine, 700 employees.
First of all, we did, as we do in all conflict zones, we began by identifying the 700 people who work for us to see if we could help, if we could help their families, if we could help them leave the country, and then if we could accommodate them when they leave the country. A lot of these, they were accommodated in Poland. Surprisingly isn't the word, but importantly, 4 hotels remained open. We closed one in Kyiv, a Fairmont that we've since reopened. Now, I see them once a week. It used to be twice a week with Duncan O'Rourke, who manages the Northern European region. There's no other word. It's wonderful.
It's when you're on Zoom with these people in charge of hotels in a conflict zone and who keep smiling, this is probably a kind smile for me, but they were being bombed, they were suffering. Hotels were full of people that they were either protecting or people from the UN, people from the Red Cross, the High Commissariat for Refugees, or various other organizations and forces from other countries, witnesses, the media. They were doing their jobs to ensure that a certain number of us could follow what was happening live in this lovely country. We went to the Polish border. We went to see a center for refugees. We went to Warsaw, of course. Accor was nothing short of wonderful.
Those two days we felt that we were useful, and you really want to do 10 times more than we were actually doing. As for the outlook for 2022. Now, the group tends to project itself 3 years, 4 years in advance, and I'm the first to blame for that. This tailwind never lasts very long. It's important to really get the best out of it, and our priority must be to capture the rebound. The second perspective, we'll probably talk about it in the Q&A. If there's one area where we haven't got all the answers, it's the whole issue of our talents, our talented people. It's essential that they remain with us in the years to come because we need them, because they're very good and talented, because they are our greatest asset.
It's also important that we attract a certain number of people who haven't come back for all sorts of very good reasons. We need to attract talent. If our hotels are full this summer, which I hope, we do not have the ability to serve people in hotels that are full. We are 10%-15% short of the headcount we need. We need these people by May, June and July. We must also develop the network associated to higher fee generation per room. This is because it's important to be aware of the fact that for this group, it's important to generate as much RevPAR as possible. A Fairmont hotel room represents five times the same RevPAR as an ibis hotel room. This is another reason that we have upscaled our business, because there's higher profitability when rooms are more expensive.
Not going to delve into the economics there, but the fourth point I want to mention is ESG. Environmental, Social, and Governance issues are a very vast world. You'll be hearing more about this very, very shortly. It's important to show that though vast, it's possible to work on this in maybe four different categories with different means, talents and budgets. All of this aimed at the same goals. Finally, we must keep innovating. The lifestyle experience has well, it was a very daring bet at the time, but it's one that's paid off. We'll be taking up more challenges in the world of hospitality, which is constantly changing. It's now time for a short video on ESG, and then I'll ask Brune Poirson to replace me at the podium. Thank you.
Today we're all going in the same direction to build the future together. We won't stop traveling, moving forward, exploring around us. Nature inspires us. Its beauty allowed us to offer always more. More than a stay, more than a vacation, more than an experience. We now need a new vision of travel and hospitality. We are Accor. Actors of change. We work hand in hand with communities. We are locally rooted. When we connect diverse people, moments, cultures, we elevate each of us for a better tomorrow and purpose in mind. We are Accor. Territories for progress. Our hotels open the way for change. Net zero starts now. We build for the future. We refurbish the old. We are care builders. Air, soil, water, light. It's all connected. We are Accor. Reformers rethinking consumption, ready to change habits, challenging supply chains. Committed head to tail, farm to fork.
Where zero is hero, where local is normal. With plans in place, acting for transition. We are Accor, and we invite each of you to become conscious explorers. It's not about far. It's not about frequency. It's now about experiencing and creating connections to others, to places, while you open your eyes, wings and hearts. This future is a collective voyage. It is time that our migrations and each of your exploration leaves a positive mark. You are conscious explorers, and at Accor, we will make each of your stay a contribution everywhere.
Ladies and gentlemen, chairman. First of all, in terms of sustainable development for Accor, it's nothing new. It's really part and parcel of the very identity of our group, of Accor's DNA, and for a very long time now. In fact, Accor was one of the first companies, one of the first multinationals to set up a sustainability and sustainable development. Planet 21 initiated a transformation over the past 10 years, generating results, making the group one of the sector leaders in terms of non-financial ratings. The strategy, the policies I'm gonna describe are not really just coming out of the blue. They're rooted in a long-standing history, and it's part of the group's DNA. Today, sustainability expectations have never been so strong. As Sébastien said
Our goal is really to turn this into an opportunity and not to see it as a constraint. It's plain that we're facing growing pressure, regulations, national regulations quickening in France, also in Europe with the European Green Deal, also with COPs internationally, both on biodiversity, desertification, but also global warming, all that, which will lead to further national regulation throughout the world, exerting stronger pressure. Commercial pressures, investors, as Jean-Jacques said, want concrete, tangible proof in terms of commitments, fighting global warming, preserving biodiversity. Our partners, too, be it insurance companies or the online travel agencies, many organized, and I'll come back to that are organized in order to showcase the most virtuous hotels on their websites.
Of course, our suppliers and clients, some of our major accounts have taken CO₂ reduction pledges, and we're part of their Scope 3, and they also require that we be very active in fighting global warming. As Sébastien mentioned a moment ago, in terms of talent retention, we know that to continue to attract and retain and grow our talent, the question of the fight against climate change, solidarity, and rethinking issues around working conditions, all that's absolutely central and must be part and parcel, the quest for meeting and really be present at every level in the company. Of course, lastly, we're under increased scrutiny on the part of regulators, but also many of our fellow citizens to keep a close watch on combating greenwashing. Sustainable development mustn't just be a marketing plan.
Eco labels that are growing, becoming very more demanding and robust, online reviews and the growth of social media with heightened disclosure. Accor is very fortunate. It's a European company. Some may regret it, but we think that it's an opportunity. We are subject to more exacting regulation, more demanding than some of our peers. It's an opportunity because it's a competitive edge versus some of our peers. As a European company, we must showcase these initiatives, put them at the heart of our business model, embark on genuine change, and we can do that ahead of our peers. Now, our strategy and our sustainability approach is science-based. We base our work on the IPCC that flag two key points that are reflected here, which are people and nature.
One of the latest reports of the IPCC, the one just out in February, stressed the importance and interdependency. It's the first time this was clearly stated in the report between nature, preservation of biodiversity. When I say it's really not just the plants on the roof, but the ability to preserve carbon sinks, to transform energy systems, to cut CO₂ emissions, and then the people, social, human dimension, because we know how much global warming and biodiversity erosion is linked to social inequality. It's really science-based approach, putting these two points at the heart of our strategy to articulate this concretely. Every stay in our hotels must be not just a contribution by drastically reducing our resource consumption, particularly water, but of course, energy and more broadly, reduce the amount of waste we produce.
We're committed to cutting plastic. We have 10,000 bars and restaurants in food and beverage. That's science-based. It's a major impact to the group on the environment and nature. In that, it's a central part of our strategy and what we call Explore outside the hotel. Our guests stay with us, but by definition, the hotel is just a stepping stone. They just spend their time outside the hotel, and how Accor contributes to the life of the community, improves nature and biodiversity around it. I won't detail all these items, but perhaps just stress that, for food, one of our goals in 2023 is to accelerate on food waste reduction with responsible sourcing, with purchasing, and change our consumption habits to reducing meat in our menus and continue to work on promoting human rights.
We wanna have hotels, social and cultural roots within the community. We think that will lead to an improvement of our sustainability footprint, make them more integrated in the community. If we take, for example, food. Well, if hotel products are sourced locally close to hotels, that of course improves the quality of the soil around it, because Accor is a major client to change certain agricultural practices to reduce carbon in the soil, thus improving the quality of the products served in our hotels. Now, in 2021 was a year of acceleration at the request of our CEOs, Sébastien and Jean-Jacques Morin, renewed governance and ambition that is championed both by Sébastien Bazin and all the ExCo members. I'm fortunate to be able to discuss sustainability issues.
Not just discuss, but to find common solutions with my ExCo colleagues, because I'm a member which I can place sustainability to ensure that it is part of the strategy and not just ancillary in order to be able to gradually each of the functions in each of the regions. That's why we've incorporated ESG criteria and executive bonuses. We're working on a cross-functional transformation plan. Furthermore, we want to align, Jean-Jacques touched on this, aligning finance's sustainable development with a sustainability-linked bond, very successful, and alignment of financial and sustainable strategies. Key projects where we quicken the pace. Quick commitment to reduce our CO₂. emissions by 2050, starting as of today. We're not gonna wait to 2049 to act. Removal of all guest-facing single-use plastic by the end of this year, and strengthening efforts to promote gender equality.
Scrapping all single-use plastic items that are guest-facing. That excludes, of course, disposable plastic bottles. 39% of women in management committees, 90% of employees who've undergone sustainability training. Hotels, that's a key point I mentioned, greenwashing and the importance of fighting against that and to align our non-financial performance with our financial performance also by renewing our measurement tools, our environmental impact with the rollout of a carbon emissions measurement tool. There, again, bonus-based, and I said the goal is to achieve very concrete results by the end of 2024 and not to wait 2030 or 2050. Achieve a 21% reduction in emission Scopes 1 and Scopes 2 and 12.5% in Scope 3 by 2024. Carbon neutrality. Net carbon, of course, that's part and parcel of the company's strategy. It starts today.
We're working actively on this with a target, a first milestone in 25, another in 2030. How do we do this? Well, the question of the approach in terms of sustainability in here, the how, the what, how we prepare the pathway and onboard everyone in terms of fighting global warming. Accor doesn't have the solutions on its own. There are issues where we must work with some of our peers, and that's why we were particularly involved as part of the COP 26, even if we signed the Glasgow Declaration and were part of the Sustainable Hospitality Alliance, working with our competitors in the hospitality industry to become net zero by 2050. Furthermore, I mentioned the importance of these coalitions. That's the case.
Accor is a founding and very active member of a coalition on suppressing single-use plastics in the tourism sector. Accor will be one of the first companies to achieve the elimination of single-use plastics by 2022, and we've managed to onboard a great many players in this process. Gender equality is key for us. Accor is positioned as a leader in gender-based violence coalition with the UN, a grant of EUR 5 million spread over five years, the ALL Heartist Fund. These are commitments that date back a long way to support actions in favor of women's freedom and rights accelerated during COVID, where women were welcomed in our hotels, and we want to take this to the next level. That's really just to give you an overview of our major initiatives.
All that is a wide-ranging project, but we're rolling it out in a collaborative approach at every level of the company. That's how we'll be able to gradually transform our business model. As Seb said, it's a great opportunity to grow and give new functions, a new vision for our hotels, deliver tangible value both for the company and the environment. Since you've mentioned me four or five times, I'd like to thank you. Before handing over to Besma, who will report on the work sessions of the board that represent you, I'd like to say a brief word. They're gonna blush, but as they're in the first row, you won't see them blush.
It so happens that we have three board members who are leaving the board because for some of them, well, they've reached the limit of 12 years. 12 years allows you to remain an independent board member. If you remain beyond 12 years, you become a dependent board member. I'd like to begin with the first, Sophie Gasperment. Sophie is gonna actually report to you in a moment on the work of the Nominations and Compensation Committee in a few minutes time. On behalf of each and every one, I'd like to thank Sophie, whom you know very well, actually. We had dinner last night with the board members to be able to bid farewell. Sophie has a rather specific feature.
I mean, it's quite very rare to see in the same individual they've a lot of exacting standards, commitment, involvement. A very positive outlook. Sophie's always loved this company, has always defended it, has always read everything about all the work of the board, all the audit committees, all the non-financial material. She's been a remarkable chair of the Nominations and Compensation. Been upright, loyal, exacting, not always in agreement with management, but always supporting the greatest number of employees, number of performance shares voted every year. We're gonna miss you hugely because your successor is gonna be tough to resemble you. It'll be possible to succeed you. Sophie, everything you've brought to the group was important.
For many of you the end, so if you'd like to say a word to Sophie, don't hesitate. She'll have many other opportunities to hear us acknowledge her work. You're really quite unique, Sophie. Thank you.
Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo.
Aziz Aluthman Fakhroo, who's a French Qatari and, who has a great, fortune to be one of the, in fact, the biggest group in Qatar called Ooredoo. Aziz is a former budget minister in Qatar during difficult, embargo periods with the neighboring countries. He protected Qatar, his budget, and his finances. He took very difficult decisions and with the difficult task of being head of the Commitments Committee, for a number of years. This is a committee you're probably not very familiar with because it's a, board committee at which all decisions that can be taken by management in excess of EUR 100 million, either in the form of investment or divestment, must be reviewed by this Commitments Committee, which he chaired and oversaw.
The work of this committee reports to the board of directors because management cannot take these decisions alone. My dear Aziz, we knew one another beforehand. We met in Qatar, in fact. You are a remarkably intelligent man. You are very, very refined, and I think you really shook us up. You avoided us making mistakes. I think you amended quite a few things that we did from the financial point of view. You know, the hotel business like the back of your hand. As I said to him yesterday, you've been my guiding light. Those of you who know the Arabian Peninsula, it's difficult to navigate between Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Qatar, and so many other countries, but the best man for that is President Sarkozy, and thank goodness we have him with us in this room.
Aziz, in many, many cases, you have been my eyes, and you have been a source of great advice. You two, I'm very sad not to have you on the board anymore. The third person, whom you didn't see much of, but who has been present, this is Sheikh Nawaf al-Thani. He has been an excellent representative of this group. He was the chair of Katara Hospitality, which is probably, if not the biggest or second biggest owner of luxury brands in the world. Lots of brands. Too many non-Accor brands. We'd prefer to have had more of them ourselves, but it's a wonderful group, and Sheikh Nawaf was very often accompanied by Kamal Rhazali, who's also here. Kamal, thank you for being our ambassador, our diplomat, and thank you for helping us seduce Katara and its management.
Thank you for helping our brands be the most vibrant, the most visible, and thank you for the great development capacity you've had. Ladies, sir, this is your last AGM. When you're shareholders, I think we underestimate what our directors do. I know you vote for them, but probably about 12 meetings a month, some informal. I think during the crisis, we spoke every Thursday from 12:00 PM- 12:45 PM to share our doubts and talk about decisions to be taken. All three of you, please come back and see us as often as possible. Thank you. Thank you very much. We're not alone.
We're fortunate to have, if you vote favorably, we're fortunate in having three new board members who'll be joining us, who were so kind and so courteous or both to come today to introduce themselves in the front row. For some of them, it's probably intimidating them to be here at this first AGM. Hélène Auriol Pottier, she knows board meetings very well. She's very familiar with the international world. She's a lead executive of Microsoft and many other companies. She said, "Right, I'm going to support Accor to really give them," because I think that she's spent more time abroad than in France. There's the multicultural aspect, a new perspective and exacting standards similar to Sophie's in terms of involvement. Hélène, welcome to the board. Asma Abdulrahman Al-Khulaifi, welcome Asma, who's from Qatar, speaks French fluently.
Her father was a diplomat, a legal counsel at QI, representing bringing her youth and her energy. Another I discovered this morning, Ugo Arzani, is Italian, Italians and French. We'll see how we cohabitate, but knows Qatar. He's within QI for nine years, in charge of consumer retail luxury. It'll do us a power of good to have Ugo join us. Who's invested a lot on behalf of Qatar. Very good investment banker before going to Qatar, and Accor's increasingly present in the world of augmented hospitality and particularly, the upscale segment. Ugo, really the right time for you to come with your valuable insights. Thanks to the three of you. Sorry, Besma, slightly longer. That wasn't planned, but I wanted to say a word about you. No problem. That was a very good introduction.
I'll start with the composition of the board without going into detail. You'll recall that throughout 2021, the board made up of 12 board members, 60% independents, 40% women, two representing employees. In 2022, as you know, 7 terms expiring today after the AGM and subject to approval of resolutions. The number of board members as well as the proportion of independents will remain unchanged. The only change, and we welcome that, the proportion of women will grow from 40%- 50%. Let's now briefly review the work of the board. During the course of 2021, the board met on 11 occasions with an average attendance rate of 93%.
During the year, the board reviewed the group strategies, adopted decisions during the normal course of its business, but also during this year, which was marked because of the persistence of the COVID. It monitored the impact of the health crisis on its business, as well as the missions undertaken by the ALL Heartist Fund. It authorized the sustainability-linked bond for an amount of EUR 700 million, as well as the creation of the Lifestyle and its small platform. As you know, the board, for its tasks, relies on the work of four committees. The Audit, Compliance, and Risk Committee met four times with an average attendance rate of 95%. This committee prepared the deliberations of the board pertaining to the review of annual and half-yearly financial statements.
It tracked the missions of the ALL Heartist Fund and the implementation of the compliance program and measures of cybersecurity and data protection. Commitments Committee, all meetings open to all board members, met five times with a participation rate of 100%. It reviewed the various M&A projects or disposals of the Group investments by Accor, a sponsor in the SPAC acquisition company.
International strategy addressed international developments and their impact on the group. Attendance rate there 80%. Lastly, the Nomination, Compensation and ESG met five times during the year with an average attendance rate of 94%. The work of this committee in 2021 will be presented by its chair, Madame Sophie Gasperment, in a moment. Thank you.
Merci, Besma.
Thank you, Besma. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good morning. I'm very happy after two years of remote AGMs to see you in person today and to tell you once again, one last time about the work of the various committees. You remember that in 2020, given the scale of the health crisis and its major impact on the group, Board of Directors decided to adapt the compensation of our Chairman and CEO and indeed the compensation of our directors to the context. For 2021, insofar as the situation has stabilized, at least partly, the board has implemented a compensation strategy in line with what you approved last year. The fixed component of Sébastien Bazin's compensation has remained unchanged at EUR 950,000. His variable annual compensation has been assessed based on the criteria that we decided upon together.
Very briefly, they are from the quantitative point of view, which is 80% of the total. These criteria were EBITDA and free cash flow, sustainable savings under the reset plan, net organic growth of the number of rooms, and two CSR criteria, the rollout of the ALLSAFE health safety program, and secondly, the percentage of women on our management committees. To that we add a qualitative criteria of 20%. First of all, strategy and management of the team as we get out of the crisis, operational excellence, and the new organization development of talent. After analyzing the performance and achievements of each of these goals, in quantitative and qualitative, the board of directors has decided that Mr.
Bazin's variable compensation for 2021 would be EUR 1,420,208, which is 113% of the reference amount, which is capped at 120%. Your chairman was also granted a number of performance shares, which he must hold for a certain period of time, and you'll find the details in the universal registration document that has been at your disposal. At the same time, as every year since 2014, you will be voting on the compensation policy for your chairman and CEO. This is what we call the say-and-pay resolutions, or in this instance, ex ante say-and-pay.
You'll have seen in the documents at your disposal that you will find the fixed component of his compensation, the variable compensation and the reference amount, and the percentage that can be paid in performance shares. They are all unchanged for 2022. However, this is very important, this is very consistent with what we've just said. The board decided at the recommendation of the committee to increase the, let's say, the percentage that ESG goals represent. They've been increased from 10%- 15%. Three criteria, I think, a good reflection of the group's priorities. First of all, the percentage of hotels managed and under franchise that have done away with single-use plastic in the customer experience, with the exception of water bottles issued.
Secondly, the percentage of women on management committees, and thirdly, the percentage of hotels and head offices that have set up a system for measuring carbon emissions. In the same vein, in order to reflect the importance of ESG in the group's long-term strategy, the board of directors decided to introduce for the very first time an ESG objective in the criteria for the attribution of performance shares to the chairman CEO, in fact, to all beneficiaries. This criterion, which will represent 20% of the total, measures the reduction in the greenhouse gas emissions, whether they are direct or indirect, in our hotels managed or under franchise, and of course, in line with the group's objective of becoming net carbon zero by 2050.
To conclude, I'd like to extend my warm-hearted thanks to you, dear shareholders, for the interest you have shown, for our exchanges, and for the confidence and trust you have had in us in recent years. This AGM is the last one I will be sharing with you as a director after 12 years on the board of directors and 6 as president of the nominations, compensation, and CSO committee. It's been a great honor for me, a great pleasure. I will leave you with a board of directors that is active, a very enthusiastic operational team, as Sébastien has said, very committed, whatever the level of difficulty. Of course, your chairman and CEO, who is a visionary, a very talented man, who really, I think, is an excellent standard-bearer for Accor.
You can count on me to be an ambassador, whatever happens, of the group in years to come. Thank you for your attention, and let me wish you all the very best.
Thank you, Sophie. Thank you so much. Different register, if we could ask Cédric Haaser to give us the auditor's report or reports. Cédric, you have the floor.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, chairman. On behalf of the College of Auditors, that's PricewaterhouseCoopers and Ernst & Young, I have the honor of reporting on our work in respect of the financial period ending December 31st, 2021. Our report on the statutory and consolidated reports and a report on related party agreements will be found in the universal registration document that you will have seen, but also in the notice of meeting for this AGM.
Our other reports are also found in the notice of meeting, and the page numbers should be displayed on the screen there, I believe. As is now customary, I propose just to sum up the main elements of these reports. Concerning our reports on the financial statements, let me remind you that the goal of our audit is to arrive at reasonable assurance that the financial statements and accounts are true, sincere, and consistent, and that they do not comprise any anomalies. We adapt our approach to the group's different activities and businesses, and also the fact that it's an international organization . We check current operations, but also special events, and have taken a great deal of care in line with professional standards in force in France.
We have shared our conclusions with the financial departments of the group and financial entities on the occasion of our numerous exchanges. We have also reported on our work and conclusions to the audit committee, and indeed to the board of directors of your group. Let me begin with our report on the statutory financial statements of Accor SA, which are drawn up in compliance with French accounting standards. We have unreservedly certified these accounts, but with a technical observation concerning the change of accounting method subsequent to the recommendation by the French accounting standards recommendation regarding the attribution of post-employment staff benefits. Furthermore, we felt that the assessment of equity securities was a key aspect of our audit and have therefore described the special work that we have carried out on this particular point.
Secondly, concerning our report on the group's consolidated accounts, which are drawn up in compliance with the IFRS standards as adopted by the European Union, we have certified these accounts unreservedly and without any observation. We felt that the evaluation of intangibles was one of the key points of our audit, particularly in the light of the very significant estimations of management. In fact, in this report, we have itemized the specific audit we carried out on intangibles. Finally, we ensure that the management report included all the information required by law. Thirdly, we have also issued a report on related party agreements. This year, a new agreement was notified to us. This is one that was entered into with Worklib in the course of the year period, with a view to investing a total of EUR 2.4 million.
The agreement concerning a partnership with Katara Hospitality, with a view to creating an investment fund dedicated to hospitality in Africa, already authorized by the board in 2019. This agreement continued throughout the period. Likewise, with the partners concerning the partnership with Paris Saint-Germain, which was authorized by the AGM of June 30th, 2020. EY and Associates acted as independent third parties to issue a limited assurance report on the check of the consolidated declaration of extrafinancial or non-financial performance, which you will find in the universal registration document. No particular problems were identified regarding the compliance with the declaration or the sincerity of the information included in that report. Finally, we have issued three reports that have been at your disposal and that are also to be found in the notice of meeting.
These reports concern resolutions 17, 18, 19, and 20. These are resolutions which are aimed at authorizing trading in various securities of your company. The first concerns the authorization to attribute free shares, whether existing or to be issued. The second concerns a report on the issuance of shares and securities reserved for members of an employee share ownership program. The third concerns the issuance of free equity warrants in the event of a public tender on the company. These reports do not contain any particular mentions or observation. We will draw up additional reports if required when these authorizations are put into practice by the board of directors. That brings me to the end of my report. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Cédric. We're now going to move on to a presentation of the 21 resolutions, which Besma will describe.
Well, the first two resolutions concern the approval of the statutory and consolidated financial statements for 2021. The third resolution concerns the allocation of earnings for the period 2021 to the reported retained earnings account in the absence of a dividend. The resolutions 4- 10 concern nominations and renewals of directorships. The fourth to sixth resolutions concern the nominations of new directors already named by Sébastien. The next four resolutions concern the renewal of the directorships of Madame Kinga Göncz, Nicolas Sarkozy, Mrs. Isabelle Simon, and Mr. Sarmad Zok. These will all be for a three-year term of office. The eleventh and twelfth resolutions are what we call ex post say-on-pay. In the case of the eleventh resolution, you will be asked to approve the compensation of all executive directors, including directors on the board.
The twelfth resolution concerns the approval of the fixed variable and exceptional components of Sébastien Bazin's total compensation and benefits of all kinds paid or attributed in respect of 2021. The thirteenth and fourteenth resolutions ask you to approve the compensation policy for the chairman and CEO and the directors for 2022. This is what is referred to as the ex-ante say on pay. All information on the compensation of executive directors will be found in the universal registration document for 2021. The fifteenth resolution concerns a related party agreement. This is the pact entered into with the Bazilu , Anima SAS, and Mr. Alexandre Cadain concerning the governance of the company known as Worklib. You are also asked to take note of the auditor's special report concerning related party agreements entered into during previous periods, which continued to be in effect in 2021.
The sixteenth resolution asks you to renew the authorization you grant to the board of directors every year to trade in the company's shares. This authorization will have a maximum of 10% of the share capital at a maximum share price of EUR 70 per share. This authorization may not be used in the event of a public offer. The seventeenth resolution authorizes the board of directors to attribute performance shares to employees and executive directors of the group within the limit of 2.5% of the share capital. The eighteenth resolution establishes a ceiling as regards the number of performance shares that can be attributed to executive directors, capping it at 15% of the total number of shares attributed.
The nineteenth resolution concerns capital increases for the benefit of the members of an employee share ownership program, capped at 2% of total share capital. The 20fth resolution concerns the issuance of equity warrants to be attributed free of charge to shareholders in the event of a public offer and up to a maximum of 20% of the share capital. The 21st and last resolution concerns powers for formalities. Thank you. We can now begin our Q&A session.
Thank you, Besma. Okay. This is an exercise that a lot of you in this room enjoy immensely. I know it. In fact, I see a few faces that I know who have come to see us for this particular moment of pleasure, which will last exactly 30 minutes or thereabout. Not much longer anyway. It's already 10:30 AM.
Let's begin our Q&A session until 11:00. Let's begin. I can't see much from where I am with the lights. We must begin with the written question. I have to abide by the rules. Besma. Well, we've received a written question from a shareholder. It's in English, but I'll try and translate it for you. Congratulations on the ESG part of the compensation policy and the details you've provided us. Do you propose to include additional criteria such as water consumption or contributions to local communities? Well, not for the moment because you've just heard Besma mention the three criteria in my compensation, three ESG criteria. Every year, the Nominations and Compensation Committee reviews all these criteria.
What I can promise this gentleman or lady, I'm not sure which, is that we will give your question to the board of directors for the purposes of 2023. We will see how they take it from there. We also have two questions from the Shareholders Consultative Committee. First of all, under what condition do you think the Accor Group could pay a dividend once again to its shareholders? When do you think it would be reasonable to hope that dividends will be payable? The option of paying dividends in shares, is that something we could envisage? Well, very importantly, in difficult times, we need to be consistent before, during, and after the crisis. Now, I can confirm this. We said so when we presented the results of just two months ago in this same room.
We are perfectly consistent and with what we've been saying for the last 10 years, 50% of recurring free cash flow will be paid out in the form of a dividend to shareholders. That's 50% of free cash flow. Beyond that level, every year the board debates this issue. Paying dividends in shares, well, the board discussed the matter and decided that our share price doesn't really reflect the true value of the company. There was no need to pay a dividend in shares. It's 50% of free cash flow, correct? Yeah. I hope, because this is a rule that's in black and white, and I hope this is a rule that we will continue to apply.
I hope that free cash flow in 2022 will be higher. In which case, we'll be able to pay out a dividend for 2022. The first quarter was difficult with the Delta and Omicron variants. Our hopes are much higher for the second and third quarters. If on top of that, we have a good fourth quarter, then we might be able to pay out a dividend in respect of this year. The second question from the Individual Shareholders Advisory Committee is that during the COVID crisis, Accor went beyond the call of duty to preserve the health and the sustainability of its ecosystem and the tourism ecosystem, its assistance to employees, hotels and staff, local suppliers, everybody benefited. Is this a step towards the company's interest, or is it something more? No, we are not on a mission.
I don't think there's any need to be on a mission. I would consider this as one of our values. It's important to do this for everybody. Behind these initiatives, there's nothing more. However, a few days ago, we talked about this, and the board will be discussing it at a future date. There are a number of standards in America in particular called B Corp. We have to ask ourselves a number of questions. Now, we do things better, maybe earlier than others. Why not? No taboos about all this, but what we did was not a step in the direction of any particular mission or any particular goal. Questions from the room. Gentlemen, you look very impatient, sir. Question number one.
Claude Roche.
Claude Roche. In February, last February, you acquired Sodexo, Le Lido, which is one of the jewels in the Parisian nightlife crown. I've heard on various radio stations and television stations, I've heard interviews from performing artists from Le Lido, some of them in tears, awaiting their letter of resignation or letter of laying them off, people who work in masks and decoration and dancers. How could we possibly ever forget Mistinguett, Line Renaud, Zizi Jeanmaire walking down that great staircase, people who were part of the magic of the Lido in Paris nightlife. I have two questions. What was the purpose of this acquisition, even for a symbolic euro? Accor, outside of its arenas, has never owned a cabaret of any description.
Secondly, do you intend to include the Le Lido in your new holding company, Ennismore, alongside Mondrian, which is an icon of a culture that has 1,440 rooms, but that has another almost 2,000 in the pipeline? Let me conclude with five words. We have missed you terribly. Thank you. Thank you so much. You too, despite your question, we have missed you terribly. You would have noticed maybe five or six years ago, if not more, that I tried to convince as many people as possible that the world of the future was a different world, particularly in terms of customer relations, which is a world that is a disruption from the previous three or four decades.
What really matters in the hospitality business is to welcome our clients, ensure that they have a very enjoyable stay, and ensure that this stay is as captive as possible. We ought to do everything to ensure that our customers come and have their breakfast, lunch, dinner, everything to ensure that they spend all their money with us and enjoy themselves immensely. Because of the social networks, all our clients throughout the world have had a number of options on their cell phones between experiences, concerts, restaurants, and all within a five or 10-minute walk from the hotel. In addition, we provide them with an itinerary, so they don't have to go hunting down places to go. People traveling want to do exactly the opposite. They want to escape the hotels despite the comfort of the rooms.
This is what we call augmented hospitality, and we've explored various worlds to accompany our clients, to act as a guide for them, take them by hand to show them a certain number of experiences outside of their hotel rooms. In almost half of these cases, there are music, entertainment, I won't say nightlife, but certainly festive attractions. Then that is the rationale we use, particularly with our loyalty program. This is why we are trying to ensure that our clients benefit from a certain number of priorities for certain events and festivals. Le Lido on the Champs-Élysées, which is one of the most beautiful streets in the world, certainly Sodexo wanted to dispose of it after operating it for 10 years or so. We had the opportunity to sit down at the table with Sodexo. I can assure you that that address is outstanding.
It has an outstanding history, but the economic model was extremely dangerous and not sustainable. I think everybody will acknowledge that over the last 10 years, Le Lido has lost almost EUR 80 million, almost EUR 8 million a year, because this is a world where you need innovation. In fact, a lot of the clientele of Le Lido over the last five or six years have been coming from the provinces of France with bus companies. People weren't coming back because it was the same show for five or six years, and it simply wasn't viable. We had to sit down and think about it differently. Sure, to be consistent with the history. In fact, Le Lido wasn't always a cabaret. It used to be a musical theater.
Now, Jean-Luc Choplin, the former CEO of the Théâtre du Châtelet, will play a role in rethinking, reshaping Le Lido. I take no pride in saying this, but it so happens that for 12 years, I was chairman of the Théâtre du Châtelet. In fact, I stood down just a mere three months ago, quite simply because Le Lido was part of the Accor group, and it wasn't very healthy to have these two hats. It's not a world that we're unfamiliar with. I hope you'll be pleasantly surprised. We do everything we can to talk, discuss, find solutions with the staff. Trust me on this, Accor has always succeeded by being very consistent with its ambitions. Accor has always succeeded in holding dialogue to ensure everything goes as well as possible with as little impact as possible for the parties concerned.
Next, next question, please.
Yes, good morning. Very pleased to be at an AGM that's pulsating here. We talk a lot about carbon footprint for buildings, et cetera. You got a lot of franchisees having stayed in a few aging ibis hotels. Have you an idea of how old your hotel base is on a scale C, D, in terms of their energy consumption to know how much will be required to achieve carbon neutrality? Second question. There were calmer times when independent hotels protested against online travel agencies. Airbnb bookings had no control over their prices and on their bookings. Independent hotels set up an independent platform.
I'd like to know whether Accor or other Hilton-style groups, if you have an idea of rather like the bookings platform, where you have no pressure from the online travel agency, booking Airbnb and co, 'cause that's gonna push prices up. Are you considering that again, or is it each every independent group that does that, its own platform separately? Thank you.
Well, on your first point, it's very technical. I'll tell you what we're currently putting in place. I mean, there are commitments that were made to have net zero carbon by 2050. The second pledge we made, that same emission be reduced by 46% by 2030. We did that when we issued the sustainability bond. Second thing that was done is that when you have a volume of carbon in the group as a whole, you need, of course, to split that amount by hotel, by geography. You're right, depending on the age of the property, the older the property, the more it emits. We're fortunate in the new hotels built today, we ensure that some of them are indeed carbon-free, net zero from day one.
That's fully achievable and has been demonstrated in the U.K. It's a colossal task that's underway now for three months. I want each of the hotel managers and the owners, franchised or managed, should know the emissions level of their own property and the town in which they're located and the causes of said emission. Once we've been able to map that by property, by geography, and by brand, then we'll be able to provide the solution. It's due to the materials used, the building that's emitting, et cetera. The building, the windows. Unfortunately for us, a lot of materials have been used in the past that are inappropriate materials today. The BCD ranking will be put in place, but I want it to be bottom up, as we say.
Within 5,350 properties in the group. We have a franchisees convention on May 30th in Barcelona, European franchisees. That order multi-share so that we can onboard our hotel owners, our franchisees. But I think they're as keen as we are to meet this carbon requirement. If not, their people are very attached to that, and clients will probably choose tomorrow, pick the brands, properties and sites that best meet sustainability criteria. It's an opportunity, not a constraint, but we have to give the right numbers by hotel. On your second question, surprisingly, for five, six years now, we had many fears, firstly, on trivago, Tripadvisor, the metasearch, a lot of fears about Booking, Expedia, rising commissions, Booking, etc. Other customers, other players will come on stream.
The size of the group allowed us to resist, to get on better with many major platforms, some that are very useful to the group and our owners, to recreate an independent hotel platform, which you have the Accor Group hotels. We tried that. Unfortunately, it's too complicated 'cause the financials to be put in place to have a platform that would combine independence and big chains. I mean, those amounts are colossal if we wanna have the same means to buying the search marketing keywords from Google, same visibility. We're talking $ hundreds of millions that we'd need to invest. That's really for the short answer. We're very attuned, very attentive, but I'm very reassured as to the ability of this group.
We have about 1,000 engineers working in our digital department, people who are very savvy and sharp to ensure that the tools that are available to our hotel owners and customers are the same as those at booking. In terms of price, we work to get great deals to reassure you that the best price of a hotel is not on the online platforms, but truly in all.accor.com and Accor websites. Next question. My name's Roger Trang, the shareholder who whispers into CEOs' ears. You were in the dark there. Otherwise, I wouldn't have given you the floor. I'd like to thank you last year because you invited me to have lunch with you. Well, I'm thanking you for that invitation. The first question concerns the company, 'cause you've really got a gem of a hotel there. Is footfall down?
With the war in Ukraine, Rasputin, I mean, I won't return to Le Lido, but do you plan to compete with the Théâtre du Châtelet, with Olympia? 'Cause if you wanna transform them? You were a board member of the Théâtre du Châtelet, so do you plan to move into that neck of the woods? Maybe you could say a word about other sectors that were acquired during the sector. I mean, we didn't really know what you were, what your foray was there. I'm very unhappy because Paris Saint-Germain has really underperformed. I mean, my sense is that since Qatar took over the helm, they called it an elephant cemetery. I mean, they could have hired Benzema.
I mean, with Mbappé, that's to say they're in the French team, but unfortunately have not been able to see the Qatar leaders about Saint-Germain. I mean, I'd ask why Benzema, why wasn't he hired at Paris Saint-Germain? Thank you. Points of attention. Let's call them points of attention, not a question. On the Rasputin, it's actually a nightclub, put simply, that belongs to Paris Society. Paris Society is a company in which we invested 48% stake, 22 nightclubs, restaurants and other festive places. Now, Rasputin's doing well, very well, continues to operate in spite of its name that's of course linked to Russian culture. I hope that many places that are linked to Russian history continue to operate very well. Let me repeat this.
It's futile and malevolent to confuse a decision taken by the Kremlin, a government, in terms of the very rich, diverse Russian culture, museums, et cetera. I think continue to operate, whereas they're in the hands of many Europeans. On your second point, Shuttle Olympia, we're gonna give ourselves some time. There's first of all a real need for dialogue with those who are impacted. This discussion that's currently unfolding, of course, there's an ambition, of course, there are plans, but we're gonna look after the human capital before telling you about the leader going forward. Mama Shelter, great brand, great family, great expansion, a big success. I love the family, love the brand, and they've really done an act of faith, very compelling seven years back to tie up with. We were kind of almost two extremes.
Their agility of family and our side, our kind of immobile side that worked. They're still with us. We're delighted to be in partnership with them. PSG, Paris Saint-Germain, as it happens, I was on the other side when it was sold just over 10 years ago. Well, you know what? It's part of those adventures that are very difficult. Nothing is decided beforehand. A lot of patience, lot of people playing very well. I'll tell you that for having been the representative of PSG for five years, what Qatar has done for 10 years. Of course, we're sad when you're a PSG supporter. They're not in the final of the champions. You know, what a track record. It's 10 times, 20 times stronger than the one I left 12 years ago with players and ambition. Just give them some time.
It'll happen one day, and I hope as soon as possible. Next question. Let's have one. Then I'll move to the middle of the room. I have a question on the share ownership. Your number one investment is to invest in a hotel in Lille. Lille, when I was a young engineer, I was a shareholder of the group of that Novotel Accor for several decades, and I used to find times when Accor had over 8 billion in revenue, 1 billion in net profit. I hope we'll see a return to those stratospheric heights. That was in francs. No.
No.
Yes. Oh, in francs. Okay. You're talking francs. Yes. Not euros. If I remember correctly, back in 2007, you achieved almost EUR 900 million net profit. Yep. I think we'll see a return to that very soon. On the shareholdership, on the share, I've invested a lot in Danone. I'm an agricultural engineer, and Antoine Riboud said, "It's Reims Cathedral," and for me, Novotel or Accor is the Reims Cathedral of the hospitality sector. It's part of our heritage. I find it a pity if one day the group were to be taken over by a Qatar or a Marriott. Marriott, $55 billion market cap, don't forget. Today, we have 62% float, right? Could it be subject of a takeover bid? Thanks.
Because your first was indeed the hotel, Novotel next to Lille. It's still there. It's still in the hands of the Dubrule family. It was recently renovated. I share and agree with some of what you said, not the end bit. Of course, I wanna protect French ownership, far more numerous. They're a French story, French roots, French entrepreneurs, a lot of French talent. But this group is a French culture, but it's become a global group, where fortunately, with many managers who are not French, many of them don't speak French, it's not to their detriment. This group's fortunate in having three, four very stable shareholders, always voted favorably for the resolutions put to you. The first is Jin Jiang, Qatar QI with 11%, other one, 13% with our friends from Kingdom Hotel Investments from Saudi, just under 7%.
You know, we're in a world in which capital's open. We can regret it, but it's a fact. All French companies open above the family control today with a float that is of Anglo-Saxon strain, either from the U.K., the U.S., 'cause that's where they have the financial instruments, the pension funds to invest. Can it be biddable? It's been the case for 25 years. But it's never happened. It could happen one day. The group will fight for it to be the highest possible price or the shareholder if we could pick him. But I've been on the other side of the fence as an investor, but we never spent five minutes wondering about a takeover bid on Accor.
If it's to happen, I'll spend a lot more than 5 minutes on the deal, but we're gonna look after ourselves before a third party that would intervene in the group. I think the likelihood's less today than it was 5 years ago. Groups have suffered. We've grown because this French culture probably protects us. It's complicated for an outside player to buy 100% of the company without first agreeing with the parties that make up the group. We'll protect it. We're doing our utmost to be able to keep our roots and identity. Two in the middle. Yes, you, row four. If we could have a microphone for the gentleman, that would be. Or, yes. This is almost a naïve question that's come to mind listening to the presentations.
Accor supports football, rugby, games, the games, and has a marked passion for sustainable development, employees, etc. The benefits of sports, men and women and everyone. Won't you consider supporting a cup, Paris or elsewhere? Would that be greenwashing or the affirmation of a will? I mean. No, it's not naive. I mean, if you have a real motivation, a real plan, a real venture with values that are close to us, with customers who realize that they come together with Accor, that I hope that over and above financial clout can bring size, technology, customer pathway, etc. Well, I think that you know me. I mean, I love new venture. Is it our mission to do that? Probably not. Is our desire to listen to everything that can be proposed answers, obviously, yes.
It sounds totally incongruous, but why not? Next, question there from someone just right behind you.
Patrick Robert.
Patrick Robert. I'm an individual shareholder and also hold a platinum card. I travel. Mr. Sébastien Bazin, maybe you should have been in politics or in finance because you're what you have to say is somewhat a bit unsettling. I was at the Pullman Bercy when you said that your customer experience required that you keep in your hotels most of the people who come and spend a night in your hotel. You said that it would be really a crying shame not to use the customer database for these people and offer them something. I mean, I travel 80% of the time in France.
I see that my platinum card is really of no use whatsoever to me 'cause most times the hoteliers are irritated if only just to offer us a drink or even two drinks when they can do so. They say the cost, the expense that it represents often when we book, we are more interested in getting in touch directly with the hotel than going via the platform that's having constant outages. I don't know what your 1,000 digital engineers are up to. These things in a Paris hotel I once booked, my Amex card was hacked. When I did the letter, a message to the Accor shareholder department, I was told that you weren't fully right up to scratch for the PCI DSS standards.
I'd like to know, my two questions is, what do you plan to do for your franchisees in your own hotels to ensure that really gives us the urge to return to your hotels, remain a shareholder in your brands? Second point, in terms of cybersecurity, now when I give my card in an Accor hotel, I have some worries at 2:00AM, 3:00 AM. in the morning, something that will tell me that I made a purchase because when I was hacked, it's actually when I received your online invoice at 3:00 AM. I'd like you to answer those questions, please. Being from Fontainebleau and having had Mr.
Dubrule as mayor of the town for quite a while, who's one of the founders of Accor, I'd like to know what do you plan to do to encourage individual shareholders, of which I'm one, to remain a shareholder of this company that is a cathedral, as the gentleman said?
Well, clearly you're unhappy. I was keenly listening to see if you were to say something nice before the end. Well, first of all, welcome this morning. That's important. I'm very glad that you took the trouble to take the floor. I'm not taking anything you said lightly, I can assure you. We do everything we can to attract our clients and make sure they have the best possible experience. But you know what? Unfortunately, that's not enough. We need to do much more. We have close to 300 million guests a year.
Some, I hope as few as possible, have a bad experience like you. There's a lot in what you said. Everything you said about cybersecurity, well, we are PCI DSS.
We are PCI DSS compliant, completely compliant for all cybersecurity. Otherwise, we wouldn't be allowed to accept bank cards. It can happen that cards get hacked. That may not be due to our systems. There are other points of entry for hackers. The important thing is that somebody should be able to support you at 3:00 AM. to see if the virus that hit you came through a point of entry in the hotel where you were staying. That can be checked. That is one of the things where I unfortunately have maybe 10 people a day who are sending me WhatsApps, emails, when people ask me, "What can you do for me?" It happens. Don't leave the meeting at the end. Jean-Jacques knows all about technology, and we spend a lot of money on technology.
Stay around, and we'll talk together. It's perfectly clear, and we have a team of 25 people, our own hacking team, who bombard our systems to see just how resistant, how resilient they are. We're doing everything we can, but we're not perfect. There is no such thing as perfection. Now, another very important point in what you said is that it's something that keeps cropping up again and again. It's the very nature of the services granted to cardholders. Even though, you know, it may be an entitlement as a platinum card holder, there are still all too many hoteliers who either don't accept or grumble or tell customers that enough is enough, that the cost is too high. That is where we need dialogue.
This is why I'm going to spend two days with our hoteliers in May in Barcelona. Some of our franchisees do what's expected of extremely well. Others say it's a cost. There is no cost. We pay for it. It's all about local service. In 80% of cases, it goes well, and the other 20% of cases, you either don't get an orange juice or you don't get a second coffee, and that's extremely irritating. As for using the card outside of a hotel, this is what I'm talking about when I refer to augmented hospitality. Here again, we haven't shown you everything. You wouldn't believe the number of things you're entitled to, be it in the world of football or the Accor Arena or airline companies, Careem or.
In fact, with your card, you can order a car through our. In fact, we've spent EUR 250 million in partnerships for this card, for the loyalty card. Well, as for what we do in France, we do our best. I'm sorry, but the very fact that you're here, we're here is, well, it's the opportunity for me to say we are very eager to do better and will.
Mm-hmm.
Question number one. I really can't see a thing with the lights here. We're gonna move on to resolution shortly after. Good morning. Morning to everybody in the room. My name is Monsieur Marmoul, and I'm an individual shareholder. I'd just like to make a suggestion, if I may. To get here this morning, I struggled in the rain from Garigliano. It seems to be not very far away, and it seems to be a lovely place. On my way here from the Pont du Garigliano, I found myself reciting the poem about it's raining in the city as it's raining in my heart. What is this, langueur which is entering my heart? Well, I found myself as if encircled before getting to the door, the very entrance of this modern bunker.
My suggestion is that when you convene your AGM in this auditorium here, is that you provide us with a map. Something like what they do at Dassault Aviation to make sure that we get there easily. Well, I didn't have the right instructions to get here, and it was very difficult. When I got here, they were actually starting to close the door. They figured. Well, the great advantage is that it'll be a lot easier on the way back. Insofar as you got here, it should be a lot easier to get back. Actually, there was a map in the brochure, in the notice of meeting. It was in the notice of meeting, not elsewhere. Comments off mic. I agree.
The gentleman who told us it was raining. I came by motorbike this morning. I took a spare pair of shoes, and I missed the rain by two minutes. Look, all my employees who come here every day, who come along the same way and whom we look after when they're here. Anyway, let me say that we are delighted to have you with us this morning. We have two questions up here, two questions in front of me. Good morning. Could Accor reduce its waste by buying local food produce in France? The answer is yes. Yes, we've been studying this for nearly a year with Caroline Tissot's team, Coline Point, others. This is our global and French procurement teams and working on this particular area of
Because there's a great amount of demand within Accor. I forget if it's 80% or whatever it is. To ensure that we buy our food as locally as possible, we try to buy within five kilometers or less. Now, it's absolutely impossible for certain food types. I mean, because of the scale. Let me give you an example of this. We're working on it. We will succeed and we're in talks with a number of co-ops and producers, vegetable producers, farmers, and a lot of things are going to change. We are also looking at vegetable gardens for a lot of our hotels, either on the roof or in the gardens, on the grounds of our hotels. What I can tell you is that when you're in my shoes, you get a lot of contradictory demands.
There's a demand to reduce food loss or food wastage in a hotel. You know, food that isn't consumed within 24 hours. Actually, the biggest loss of all are breakfast buffets. To reduce the breakfast buffet, you either have to stop organizing buffets and ask people to select what they want and then bring it to them. Now, the same person telling me they're very planet-friendly do not want hotels to stop organizing a breakfast buffet. We'll get there eventually. We'll get there eventually in such a way that you there will be no waiting. You may have something different to what you had on the buffet, but this is the sort of thing we're managing every day, customers' wishes and what they're prepared to accept, which in many cases can change from one day to the next.
Another question is, will you expand business in China over the next three years? Well, we have a lot of big footprint in China, 500 hotels, and we've been working there for 45 years. We're obviously affected by what's happening in China, where there's a lot of suffering at the moment. Now, this is going to slow down our development in China over the next 6 months-12 months, very certainly, but there's no way we'll be exiting China. On the contrary, we will do everything we can to accelerate the process. China is probably the biggest hotel market in the world. We expect it to exceed the American hotel market in size and in terms of opportunities over the next 5 years-7 years.
It's a very complex market, very expert hoteliers running it, very different to our market, but we have every intention of staying in China for a very long time. We've also entered into a very large contract with a Chinese company called Country Garden, which is in fact a real estate developer with a small subsidiary called Fun Yard. This is a JO&JOE agreement, according to which, over the next 30 years, they will create 1,300 JO&JOE hotels. That's 100,000 rooms. It took us 50 years to get to 750,000. Now we are promised 1,500 within a very short period of time. I don't know if they'll succeed, but it's a marvelous opportunity for us. Let us move on to the resolutions. Madam. Two things.
First of all, beforehand, you used to put a map on the back of the entrance card. That would have been a good idea, too, this year at the back of the entrance card. Secondly, I don't understand that at the entrance here, the documents are withheld. I was asked for a notice and the reference document. I asked for them, I couldn't get them. I had to raise my voice to get them. I'm a shareholder. I'm absolutely entitled to have the knowledge I need by obtaining these documents. I'd like you to put order and do this properly next year. Dear Madam, well, we're not going to say yes to all your requests or demands. You know what? We'll make sure there's a map at the back of the convocation next year.
Dear Madam, you heard everything that this group has to do to comply with the notion of sustainable, a sustainable environment. Now, one particular aspect that's extremely important is to stop consuming paper and to ensure that the same document is at your disposal in digital form. It's very intentional that we did not make available for all of you here in the room a reference document, which is a very big, thick document, which consumes a lot of paper. And we hope that in this modern world, some of you, even though you may be disappointed, will accept that the digital world will prevail if we are to take up the challenges of the environment. That's why it wasn't done. You can request these documents before the AGM, and we'll send them to you.
We're going to move on to resolutions because you do want to vote, don't you? Okay, moving on to the resolutions. Besma, if you would, please. I'm going to give you the participation figures. 4,185 shareholders are present, represented or voted by correspondence, representing 222,612,000 out of the 261 million or more shareholders entitled to vote. The final quorum is therefore 77.38%, and the AGM can now duly conduct its business. May I remind you that since 2019, abstentions and blank or canceled votes are no longer counted as negative, but are simply discarded by virtue of the legal disposition in force. Shareholders who voted by internet or by correspondence.
Over 2 million shareholders representing a very large number of votes have chosen to vote by internet or by correspondence. We're now going to read the resolutions in extenso, given the presentations that have already been made. Now, before moving on to the votes, I'd like to explain how we vote with these tablets. Let me show you a short video before actually voting.
Pour voter les résolutions de l'Assemblée générale, une tablette vous a été remise. Elle est strictement personnelle et sert uniquement lors de cette assemblée. À l'annonce du vote d'une résolution, la fenêtre de vote s'affiche automatiquement sur votre tablette, même si celle-ci est en veille. Pour voter, rien de plus simple. Appuyez sur le bouton correspondant à votre choix. Pour, abstention ou contre. Appuyez sur OK pour valider votre choix avant la clôture du vote. Une fois votre vote validé, vous ne pouvez plus le modifier. Merci de bien vouloir restituer votre tablette en sortie de salle. Première résolution, le vote est ouvert.
First resolution, please vote.
Approbation des rapports et des comptes.
This is approval of the parent company and consolidated financial statements for the year ended at the end of 2021. Voting is over. The resolution has been approved. The second resolution that was approval of the reports and consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31st, 2021. Voting underway.
Le vote est clos.
Voting is over. The resolution has been approved. The third resolution concerns the appropriation of earnings for the year ended December 31st, 2021. Voting underway. Voting is now over. The appropriation has been approved. The fourth resolution concerns the appointment of Mrs. Asma Abdulrahman Al-Khulaifi as director. Voting underway. Voting over. The resolution has been approved. The fifth resolution asks you to approve the appointment of Mr. Ugo Arzani to the Board of Directors. Voting underway. Voting over. The resolution has been approved. The sixth resolution asks you to appoint Madame Hélène Auriol-Pottier to the Board of Directors. Voting underway. Voting is over. The resolution has been approved. The seventh resolution asks you to renew the term of office of Mrs. Qiong'Er Jiang as director. Voting underway. Voting is over. The resolution has been approved.
The eighth resolution asks you to renew the directorship of Nicolas Sarkozy. Voting underway. Voting is over. Resolution carried. The 9th resolution asks you to renew the term of office of Isabelle Simon as a director. Voting underway. Voting is over, and the resolution has been carried. 10th resolution asks you to renew the term of office of Mr. Sarmad Zok as a director of your company. Voting is underway. Voting is over, and the resolution has been approved. The eleventh resolution asks you to approve the report relating to the 2021 compensation of all executive officers. Voting is open. Voting is underway. Voting is over. The resolution has been approved.
The 12th resolution asks you to approve the fixed, variable, and exceptional components of the total compensation and benefits of any kind paid or awarded to Sébastien Bazin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, in respect of 2021. Voting is underway. Voting is over. The resolution has been approved. This brings us to the 13th resolution, which asks you to approve the compensation policy applicable to the chairman and chief executive officer for 2022. Please vote. Voting is over. The resolution has been approved. The 14th resolution asks you to approve the compensation policy applicable to directors for 2022. Voting is now underway. Voting is over. The resolution has been carried. The 15th resolution asks you to approve a related party agreement on the basis of the special report of the statutory auditors. Voting underway. The voting is over. The resolution has been approved.
16th resolution asks you to authorize the board of directors to trade in the company's shares. Please vote. Voting is over. The resolution has been approved. The 17th resolution asks you to authorize the board to grant performance shares to employees and executive officers. Please vote now. The resolution has been approved. The 18th resolution puts a cap on the number of shares that can be attributed to corporate officers. Voting underway.
Le vote est clos. La résolution.
Voting is over and the resolution has been approved. The nineteenth resolution asks you to grant authority to the board of directors to issue share capital or to make share capital issues to the benefit of members of a group employee share ownership plan. These are ordinary shares. Voting is now underway.
Le vote est clos.
Voting is over and the resolution has been approved. The 20th resolution asks you to authorize the board to issue free equity warrants to shareholders in the event of a public offer on the company's shares. Please vote now.
Le vote est clos.
Voting is over and the resolution has been carried. The 21st and final resolution asks you to grant powers to carry out formalities. Voting is now underway. Voting is over. The resolution has been approved. In fact, all our resolutions have now been approved. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, thank you for taking the trouble to come here. We will do better next time. It will probably be in the same room. We're probably here in the same auditorium. Thank you all. The meeting is now adjourned. Thank you.