Well, ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I declare open the ordinary and extraordinary combined shareholders meeting of Alstom. Thank you, the shareholders who are attending this shareholders meeting. It is the 17th shareholders meeting I have the privilege to conduct, and if everything goes well, it will be the last one. We would like to welcome some guests, analysts, and journalists in this room. Sitting next to me, Henri Poupart-Lafarge, Executive Vice President, Marie-José Donsion, CFO, and Pierrick Le Goff, Legal Manager. I would like to greet our directors here and the presence of some members of the Comex. Some of them, because of professional reasons, couldn't make it, but the majority of them are present. Like the previous years, we are going to facilitate the vote of resolutions and have a quick display of results through an electronic voting process used for your shareholders meeting.
You were given at the entrance an electronic voting box. Could you please keep them with you? Do not forget to give them back to the hostesses at the exit. I would like to draw your attention to the fact that if you leave the room before the vote, could you please give back this voting box to the hostesses. In accordance with law, I have to set up the committee, and I would like to call as scrutineers, Jean-François Guéma, representing Bouygues, major shareholder, holding 90,543,867 shares, and Jean-Charles Mériaux, representing DNCA, holding 6,408,310 shares. Both members of the shareholders meeting, accounting for the largest number of votes, and having accepted this mission. They are present here at the front. In agreement with the scrutineers, I suggest to appoint Pierrick Le Goff as the secretary to our assembly.
The statutory auditors of our company, Cédric for Mazars and Édouard Demarcq representing PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit, they will step in later on. I'll hand over to Pierrick Le Goff.
Thank you, Chairman. The agenda of this meeting is on page three of the notice of meeting, completed by the addendum given to you at the entrance of this room, and it's also on the invitation sent to the shareholders or published according to law. The shareholders meeting will take place this way. Our chairman will take stock of the situation of the company further to the completion of the transaction of transfer of energy activities of Alstom to GE. He will present the share buyback to the shareholders, and will talk about governance. The statutory auditors will make their presentations. Further to this presentation, we'll have discussions.
You will have the possibility to draw up your questions in writing and using the pieces of paper put at your disposal in your pack. Once written down, could you please give them to the hostesses in the room? You can also ask your questions orally during the Q&A session. In conclusion, we'll have the presentation and the vote of resolutions. Those resolutions are on the notice meeting on page 20 and 21, and the addendum, the report of the board of directors on those resolutions is in the notice of meeting. The draft resolution number four of the company Bouygues is in the addendum to the notice of meeting. The special reports of statutory auditors on the reduction of share capitals and the authorization to give free shares are also at your disposal.
You will also find in the addendum to the notice of meeting, information related to Olivier Bourges, the appointment of whom is submitted to your vote today. In this pack here in front of me, you have the documents required by law, and the list of it will be in the minutes of this shareholders meeting. All those documents were held at the disposal of the shareholders at the head office of the company in accordance to law. I would like to point out that the attendance list is being checked and that we will welcome the shareholders till 2:30. At the registration date of shares where you have voting vote, the share capital is made up of 310,594,909 shares at a nominal price of EUR 7 each.
According to the provisional attendance list, the present or represented shareholders or having voted remotely hold 163,671,485 shares with voting rights, i.e., 52.69% of shares with voting rights. The required quorum for this Shareholders meeting is 20% for the ordinary and 25% for the extraordinary meeting, which means that the quorum of 25% is from now on, reached and the assembly can validly deliberate. The report of the board of directors on the resolution submitted to the combined shareholders meeting is in the notice of meeting on page 8 to 12. In order to have as much time as possible for discussions, I suggest we do not read out this report. Thank you, Mr. Le Goff. I observe that there is no objection, and therefore, I suggest that we move on to the general presentation, and therefore, I will go to the rostrum.
Right. I'll present an overview of Alstom's position after the transaction with General Electric and the different resolutions that you'll have to vote on. As was announced, we closed the transaction with GE on the 2nd of November last. Alstom is now refocused on rail transportation. I suggest that we should now present a brief film, two minutes, as an illustration of what your company does today in this domain. A meeting is important. Between people who already know one another or people who never met before, who are going to meet or to meet for the first time, speak together, kiss sometimes. A meeting means you can get one another better. You can share ideas, emotions, successes, and even plans to go forward.
Today, there's a company that goes forward while remaining faithful to its history that started a century ago when they started making train engines and then broke the world speed record for trains. A history of partnerships, acquisitions. This history is that of Alstom, a company that is implanted in 60 countries. History never stops, so Alstom is making an appointment to meet in the future because the need to go forward, to meet others will get ever greater and will require more innovative and safer means of transportation, respectful of the environment. Which is why transportation is now the only business of the Alstom staff. To become a privileged partner of major companies and to reinvent the cities of the future.
To help people who every day ride on Alstom-designed trains and tramways to go and work, to go on holidays, to meet one's family or somebody whom they have an appointment with. It's important datas, and Alstom is there to provide a seamless, fluid travel. There it is. Indeed, since Alsthom, with an H, was created about a century ago, the group has evolved some 40 years ago, the merger with the Chantiers de l'Atlantique and the creation of Alsthom Atlantique. Then 30 years ago, about, Alsthom then merged with CGE to become Alcatel Alsthom. In 1998, Alstom became Alstom without the H and was floated on the stock exchange. Today, in 2015, Alstom is refocusing its business on rail transportation and acquires GE's signaling business.
The rail transportation market is highly dynamic with a strong potential due to growing urbanization, a commitment to long-term commitment to protecting the environment, and to help towards social progress. The market size is greater than EUR 100 billion, and the market is quite different from what we could see in other businesses we used to own. This market is very broadly distributed worldwide, with 50% in Europe, if we include CIS. The market is borne by the development of urban transport, which is with ever-increasing demand for system integration, which means a greater value for advanced technology. It's an area in which trunk lines, that is inter-urban transportation, is also buoyant.
It's also interesting to see here at the bottom of this slide. That, of course, there are different growth rates in different regions of the world, but all world regions are developing, although at a different rate, but always positively. On this dynamic with a high potential market, Alstom has a full range of solutions in the field of trains, of course, but also services, signaling, and systems together. That includes infrastructure. The group has top positions in a number of domains, number two worldwide in services, number one in integrated tramway system, number two in integrated metro systems, number two in signaling, and also Alstom is a pioneer of high and very high speed. You know TGV in very high speed, and the best seller of the group in high speed is the Pendolino.
The acquisition of GE's signaling business reinforces the signaling business and ups to about 20% in the share of signaling in our overall Pro forma sales. The GE business that we acquired as part of this operation at the beginning of November, on the 2nd of November to be precise, this year, employs 1,200 staff and gives Alstom access to a signaling for the freight market and strengthen its presence in North America. This is very pleasant. All this is very pleasant for Alstom. I'm presenting the general situation, but it's interesting to see how it translates into the latest figures we published.
If you look at what happened in the first half of this year, that is from the 1st of April to the 30th of September, you see some of the generic information I have just stated with a high level of orders as we recorded EUR 3.9 billion worth of orders in the first half. Compared to the equivalent half year the year before, it may look down, but at the time, you may remember that last year we registered the greatest contract ever in the history of Alstom, a contract for EUR 4 billion of trains and related maintenance in South Africa. This type of contract doesn't come every half year, unfortunately. It still means that our normal flow of orders is progressing quite nicely, all the more as it's been supported by small and medium-sized contracts. We try to follow on the book-to-bill ratio.
When it's greater than one, it means that we register more orders than what we build for the customers. We create a backlog in a way. You can see now that this book-to-bill ratio is 1.2 for the half year, and this means that the backlog has been increased year after year for the last five years. This means that the backlog has reached a record level at EUR 27.7 billion, representing more than four years of sales. It's always interesting to try and look at what happened in recent months and the general comments this can call for. It's interesting is that over this period, we registered commercial successes, otherwise, we could not have registered these orders, but we did that in all the geographic areas. There was not one region in a better position than others.
You can see some of the examples of our commercial successes in the first half of this year, where we registered major successes in Eastern Europe with the Kazakh locomotives, the locomotives in Azerbaijan, the metro in Panama, in India, regional trains in France, in Algeria, and signaling systems in Hong Kong, Canada, and Sweden in particular. This means that in terms of products and industrial base, we are able to grasp opportunities on all continents, both in developed economies where there are opportunities, but also in emerging markets. Since the results were published, we also finalized new major contracts such as for Pendolinos with the related maintenance in Italy, and more recently, Mr. Poupart-Lafarge announced two major contracts in India for more than EUR 3.5 billion.
That's for the commercial part. Of course, this has an impact on the operating income, which is up 8%, 4% with a comparable perimeter and Forex rate. We're very strong in Europe, in Italy, France, of course, and the U.K., Sweden, and also continued growth in Emerging countries in Latin America with the metros and trains, and the launch of this important contract in South Africa, which means that the operating income has progressed by 10% with an operating margin at 5.1%. Let's look at the financial impact of the transaction with GE following a whole series of rumors. I'd like to reframe what all the information. There have been adjustments that we had to make. We provided the necessary information to the market. We closed for a sum of EUR 12.4 billion. This amount has to be adjusted by three items.
First, the fact that as was announced on the first day, nothing changed here, the cash from the business sold to GE provided EUR 1.9 billion in cash to be deducted from the EUR 12.4 that we got. We had to make two steps of adjustments. Once in December 2014, plus EUR 400 million, and again in July 2015, minus EUR 300 million, in order to table a solution that would meet the objections of the European Commission. We have the transaction cost for EUR 0.3. That's something else altogether. We decided to, or accepted to reinvest into two areas. First, by acquiring the GE Signaling business of GE for EUR 0.7 billion, and also we reinvested into joint ventures with GE in the field of nuclear power, grids, and renewable energy for an amount of EUR 2.4 billion.
You know that we have a put option for these stakes to GE at a price that has been defined with a certain formula and a kind of bottom price. That means that we would get the amount of our investment plus a percentage. This gives us a net balance of EUR 7.1 billion, which means that we can provide cash to the shareholders while ensuring the financial strength of Alstom. Hence the public share buyback offer.
This public share buyback offer is on an amount of EUR 3.2 billion, i.e. 91.5 million shares of Alstom, accounting for slightly less than 30% of the share capital of the company, 29.5% to be precise. The share price bought back or repurchased, it will be EUR 35, unit price EUR 35 corresponding to a premium of 17.6% over the share price of the 3rd of November 2015. Why am I talking of the 3rd of November 2015? The board of directors proposing the convening of this shareholders meeting, and it was on the 4th. 17.6% over the share price of the 3rd of November 2015 and 21.8% over the average share price of the previous months on the 4th of November. The buyback modalities or conditions of shares you held, because we only buy back a part of the 310 million shares in circulation, are defined by law.
This is an egalitarian process related to the number of shares you hold and the number of shares you would like to contribute to this transaction, and it is centralized by Euronext. This transaction is in compliance with very strict rules, and the company does not intervene there. Euronext makes sure that no shareholder can be hit by this mode of distribution. We decided to choose this public share buyback offer because it seemed to us the most suited to the size of the transaction and the one respecting the shareholder democracy the best because each shareholder may decide to participate or not to participate into this transaction. Bouygues announced its intent to keep its shareholding post-transaction at a level comparable to the current one, around 29% of the share capital.
This offer is valid for all shares in France and abroad, provided that the legislation in force in the countries authorized that. What is the impact on the balance sheet for this transaction? We are going to look at the statements, and the situation as per September 30th, 2015. First, we need to start with the net debt of March 31st, 2014. Why? Because the agreement we signed with GE secured the taking into account by GE of the development of the transferred activities since that date. In other words, GE had the ownership of the cash flow produced or consumed, here consumed since April 1st, 2014, right up to the completion of the transaction. We start with the net debt as per March 31st, 2014, because what happened in the electric activity was offset by the price paid by GE.
We have EUR 7.1 billion net reinvested in the co-ventures, joint ventures, and the Signaling. We add the impact EUR 3.2, which is a negative impact. We deduct EUR 3.2 billion, which is the purchase price, and we have two components to take into account. The penalty paid to DOJ, and we accepted to pay for it within the framework of a transaction done with the American, and it was paid recently. The free cash flow of continued operations, minus EUR 2.2 billion. If you add up everything, pro forma, September 30th, 2015, you end up with a company with a net debt level, which is equal to 0, and cash in hand corresponding to the gross debt not reimbursed.
It's up to the company to decide in the phase 2 whether we use all this cash or part of this cash to reimburse by anticipation such and such a debt, which would come to expiry. You could use a part of this X billion of cash to pay back a part of the debt. This company with de-leverage, and after investment in joint ventures with GE, and before taking into account the cash which could be generated by the exercise of the put options to GE, if those put options were exercised by a decision of the board of directors in due time. In our case, it would generate EUR 2.4 billion, plus the corresponding indexing. The timescale of this offer is as follows. The project was given to the AMF on November 9th.
We obtained the authorization of AMF, leading to the publication of the corresponding documents on December 8th. We are holding this shareholders meeting, and if this public share buyback offer is approved, the offer should be open from next week onwards till January 20th. The outcome would be published on January 26th for settlement delivery of the offer. On January 28th, there would be a technical period to allow for the settlement via financial intermediaries. I consider that this transaction and the board of directors, as you read it in the documents, share this conclusion. This transaction is in the interest of the company, is interest of the shareholders, and I count on your support after the approval with over 99% of the GE transaction to back this public share buyback offer.
Let me say a few words on governance and the board of directors. You've got photographs of some of our directors who were present here in the first row. You see they are from the back, but here you see their faces. 14 directors. Three of them are the head of committees within the board of directors. Gérard Hauser, for the lead director and chairman of the nomination and appointment and consideration. Pascal Colombani for ethics, compliance, and sustainable development, and Alan Thomson for audits. They are chair of committees. Mrs. Gupte and Landis announced that they were going to resign from the board of directors on the 31st of December 2015. In order to reduce the size of the board, the board does not intend to co-opt immediately new directors further to those departures.
I had the opportunity already several times to announce that I would like to withdraw from the position as chairman of the board of directors. The board of directors examined the situation and confirmed Intend to keep both positions, Chairman and CEO, under the same person, and decided to entrust Henri Poupart-Lafarge with this position. Henri Poupart-Lafarge accepted, or indicated that he would accept, this joint position. According to the agreement protocol struck on the 22nd of June 2014 between the French state and Bouygues, within the framework of the acquisition project by GE of the energy branch of Alstom. Bouygues committed themselves to voting in favor of the appointment to the board of directors of Alstom, the appointment of someone designated by the state agency APE during the shareholders meeting of Alstom, and to decide upon the public of share buyback offer.
The mandate of the director appointed this way would start end of January and would end on the 31st of March 2019, in line with the bylaws of the company. APE, the state agency, proposed the appointment as an Alstom director of Olivier Bourges, Secretary General to PSA. The board of directors made the following decision. We abstain from pronouncing ourselves in favor or against this draft resolution. It has nothing to do, of course, with the name of a person, for following reason: this draft resolution was submitted according to an agreement between the Bouygues and the state, and the company was not associated to that. Some clauses are the subject of a dispute triggered by one of the shareholders, and this dispute is in progress and is in front of the courts. This draft resolution, Bouygues is number four, appointment of Olivier Bourges as director.
A resolution submitted by Bouygues, you will have to vote on it. To conclude, after the transaction, I consider that Alstom has reduced its debt and has a solid balance sheet. Alstom will operate on a healthy market with robust growth factors. It's not an easy market, but Alstom will be present on all continents with a complete range of solutions and capacity of innovation, such that we can play a leading role in the field of train services, system and signaling. The signaling, as I said earlier on, will be strengthened by the acquisition of GE Signaling. Once again, it completes from a geographic point of view and as to the range of products, it strengthen our presence in important segments of the rail transport, and we have a record backlog giving us good visibility. I'll stop here, I hand over to our statutory auditors.
Good afternoon. On behalf of Mazars and PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit, I'd like to report on the reports that we issued for the first and second resolutions to be presented today. If you allow me, I'd like to summarize these two reports. The first one related to the first resolution that is to be presented as to the causes and conditions of the capital reduction. We performed the procedures as statutory auditors to ensure that the capital reduction would remain above the minimum threshold, the legal threshold, and would not damage the shareholders. We had no comment to make as to the causes and conditions of this first resolution. The second report concerns the second resolution, that is the authorization to grant free existing or newly issued shares. The potential beneficiaries of such actions would be employees of Alstom and also the corporate officers.
We did perform the necessary procedures to make sure that the conditions would be in line with the legal provisions. Here again, for this particular report, we have no particular comment to make. I was relatively brief, but so are reports. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you. I suggest now that we should
Open the discussion, the debate. Before we start with the answers from the room and the answers to the written questions that we received, you know that we have to answer the questions received in writing formally by the company. We received two questions from Mr. Raymond Jeanjean on the 6th of December, and I'll hand over to our secretary, Mr. Le Goff, who's going to read the questions and answers made by the board of directors to these questions. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Question number one: In the context of Alstom's sale of its energy and power business to GE, could you tell me whether all the litigations in progress were transferred to GE? If not, please let me have the list of these litigations. Answer from the board, the agreement with GE provides for GE to take on the liabilities and risks.
The consequences of the litigations in progress when they take place will become incumbent to GE, indemnity clauses protect Alstom from any such litigation. Finally, we should recall that, in line with the previous communications of the company, the agreement on the 22nd of December 2014 with the American Department of Justice has concluded that this agreement cannot be transferred to GE. Question number two, please indicate the modalities for the sales contract for Alstom's energy business to GE. The answer of the board is that the agreement with GE contains strict clauses as to the confidential nature of the contents of this agreement. It is therefore impossible or recommendable to reveal this.
The company has to underscore that the relevant elements of these agreements, to make them understandable, were published in due time in the board report to the General Assembly in 2014 as well as through press releases. As an illustration on this last point, the table of contents of the contents we signed with GE to close on the 2nd of November. The table of content was 34 pages, which shows what's the bulk of the document. We'll now open the questions to the audience. I'll try to cover a few items of the questions I got in writing. There are several questions regarding the date of the OPRA. This question probably was put in writing before the detailed presentation was done. The offer will open on the 23rd of December, next week, and will remain open until the 20th of January.
Longer than the regulatory minimum, as to provide indications on the orders and sales at the end of the quarter, that all the shareholders have the necessary information. This offer will be open until the 20th of January 2016. The results will be known on the 26th with a delivery from Euronext on the 28th of January. A very limited time for transfer to the shareholders via the financial intermediaries. There's also a question about timing. Before I give the floor to the audience, because of the nasty rumors, we have this comment. Last year, the shareholders meeting was on the 19th of December. Today, this year, it's the 18th, this is aimed at going against the shareholders, which I can't see the relevance of this.
Our objective is to deal with this operation as fast as possible, according to a logical and fast timeframe. We signed the agreements with GE on the 2nd of November. On the 4th of November, we had a board meeting, as you know, 45 days are needed before we can convene a shareholders meeting. We took the minimum time required to call this meeting. Obviously, we didn't want to hold this meeting between Christmas and the New Year. I thank you all for being so many of you here. We had no intention to Go against other shareholder. The question, was there a matter of emergency? Could we not wait for the end of the year and the publication of the results then? I think we did that in a reasonable timeframe.
I'll hand over now to questions in the audience, Madam Milidon, and then a question here and a question there. All right? Yes, I'm an individual shareholder. I'd like to come back to the three resolutions. First, a comment. I regret your practice in the field of information to shareholders. In the letter of the notice of meeting, you recall that the sale of the energy business of GE was approved at the shareholders' meeting on the 19th of December with more than 99%. The shareholders that were present or represented at that meeting in 2014, owned 199 million shares with voting rights against the share capital, which is composed of 309 million shares, which means that 33% of the shares were not present. I'd like to return to the three resolutions.
The first one, Mr. Chairman, before we return to this OPRA, I'd like to recall that most of the shareholders in this room have a certain cost price of their share that was much higher than EUR 35. You justify this price of EUR 35 by a premium over the share price on 3rd of November, compared to the average 1 month before and 12 months before. This is still very far from the cost price. If I look at the EUR 3.2 billion that you're going to allocate to this program of shares buyback, is a totally non-productive investment. We should rather conserve them in order to reinforce the transport business when the time comes. I'll vote against this resolution. The second resolution, which asks us to approve a free share allocation program to the employees and corporate officers.
Mr. Chairman, speaking about the corporate officers, to motivate the corporate officers under your chairmanship that lasted for 12 years to sell our energy business to a competitor for a sum of EUR 12 billion, much lower than the actual value of this business, this is not a good solution. You should rather have perhaps tried to increase your shareholders' loyalty for those of the shareholders that have owned shares for 10 decades. I'll vote against this resolution. Recently, we talked about a possible rapprochement between Alstom and Bombardier. The news was published in the newspaper following what the Minister of Economy said to the Senate. The least thing you could have done, you or your successor, would have been to share your intention and strategy about such a rapprochement before, to tell us whether finally we've been a prey or rather a predator.
I think it would have been a good occasion to talk about this, you should have talked about the penalty that you had to pay in the U.S. and the amount of this penalty. The first resolution, the proposal to approve the appointment of director proposed by the state. The state that let go two-thirds of the transport activity to its competitors, GE. The state that had let Lafarge to go to Holcim, that has let Alcatel-Lucent to go to Nokia. The state is not at all qualified to get into Alstom's capital. It's totally incompetent, whatever the government majority is in power. I suppose I'll abstain on this resolution. I suppose you will as well, for another reason.
Mr. Milidon. I think you have more statements than questions. I take good note of your statements. I said that the vote on the project with GE, the shareholders meeting was described as being very tumultuous. I'm sorry that 35% of the shareholders didn't turn up, but I'm sorry, I cannot force them to attend. I observed that those who were present supported this project, 99.9% of them backed this project. They are right, because it's a good project for Alstom, for the shareholders, and for France. You didn't back this project. This is your right and your responsibility. As to the price of EUR 35, this price was not decided by myself and the Board of Directors on our own at random. It was subject to detailed studies.
Not only this price was analyzed by a multi-criteria analysis by different financial institutions, we also wanted to have a statement on fairness by a specialized company. This company confirmed that this share price was equitable, was fair. If you believe that this share price is not fair, you have the possibility not only not to vote on this resolution, but also not to provide your shares to be bought back by others who have another opinion. About the opportunity or not to contribute to the compensation of the management by this type of component, those shares are not free shares. Those are performance shares related to two performance criteria, demanding criteria set by the Board of Directors and in line with the recommendations of the Governance Committee and the AMF as well.
As to Bombardier, I read, as you did, some statements made there. We had the opportunity to express our opinions. You have a selective vision of what was said, because there are very precise statements expressing our opinion. We have no discussion in progress with Bombardier. It's speculation. It has to do with speculations. We do not want to comment on them. If, in the future, Bombardier had an idea of cooperation, we would examine that. It has not been the case. Bombardier chose to establish a financial partnership. The Caisse de dépôt in Quebec invested $1.5 billion to make an investment in their rail business. We are not a prey, we are not a predator, we are a spectator.
As to the lack of competence of the state, well, I take note of your statements. I'm not going to comment on them. The penalty, well, I hope it's not a surprise to you, because we had to pay this penalty of $772 million. We concluded an agreement with the U.S. judicial authorities. We paid that on the 22nd of December 2014. We did communicate on it to a large extent. Mike, please. René Pernelle, Individual Investor, [Luxo]. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very much interested in the future and the development of the new Alstom Transport. I believe that it would be good if it's possible for the company in the future, we need, for that, an opportunity to do it.
It could be good for the company to grow, because in the world for the time being, there is a plethora of companies as valid as Alstom. If Alstom could become the leader, one of the top three players, it would be interesting. I wonder about the Chinese market. I cannot remember in our last shareholders' meetings that we addressed the positioning of Alstom in China. What about the sales relationship with China? Do you sell rail equipment to China? China has a foothold on the African continent, especially for the rail infrastructure. I wonder whether it would not be clever for a company such as Alstom Transport, with a global renown for the quality of its offers, quality system, and equipment.
I do not know the exact recipe. For instance, try and build a joint venture with one of the Chinese competitor in order to sell to China and to have easier access to the African markets. Thank you for your answers. Thank you. I suggest we do is that I hand over to Henri Poupart-Lafarge, who's going to address that question, plus some questions we received from the audience and which are related to transport. You'll see that we have an answer here for China. Good afternoon. A few points on the transport market. We can start with the Chinese market. The Chinese market is rather specific. There is a stakeholder, CRRC, in China, with a quasi-monopoly on the Chinese market. We do not directly sell rail equipment to China. What do we do in China? We sell components, mainly traction chains and motors.
We sell to CRRC Assembling Trains. This is a company assembling trains on some ranges, which are new for China, like tramway. We are the first to introduce a tramway in China. We had a tramway in Shanghai, built within the framework of a joint venture in Shanghai. The traction would be done by us and the tramway itself by the joint venture. This is it for the rail equipment. There is another segment apart from the equipment, which is signaling. Therefore, this is a transition with Africa. We have a joint venture on signaling with CRRC, the champion of Chinese signaling, Casco. A very successful company, a leader in the Chinese market for urban signaling and starting to contribute to the intercity signaling.
You're right, in China and Africa, where CRRC, the roll stock manufacturer. The Chinese are active in Africa through the freight lines to dispatch ores to harbors. We can work with them and the joint venture you would like to have already exists, Casco. Thanks to this joint venture, we can have access to this. Thanks to the acquisition of General Electric Signaling, bringing us technology of the freight signaling we didn't have. We can provide even more specific products dedicated to the freight markets, Africa, Australia, and Central Asia. Our strategy in China is specific to China, given the Chinese market, but we also have other strategies for other countries dedicated to markets because there are specificities.
With regard to the external growth, you said there is a plethora of stakeholders throughout the world who are competent. It is true. Most of them are European. Any consolidation will be first and foremost European consolidations. You have the Japanese ones, the Chinese one, a Korean player, and in Europe, there are a dozen of stakeholders. To establish a transition with other markets, there is one market of interest to a lot of you, which is the French market. I have a question by Philippe Pillot, who I know well. A sleeping shareholder and a dormant shareholder. The question is rather simple, you saw that the French rail branch, FIF, which is a rail manufacturer association or a strategy council of this branch. Yes. Okay. Let me adjust my mic.
Yes, after 17 times, you know how to speak into a mic. Don't worry, says Patrick Kron. The business in France, which is cyclical by definition, this business will reach a lower level versus the current situation. Are there reasons for hope? We have to fight for that. As you know, we fight in different business segments. For the high-speed trains, the TGV joint venture was signed on the future TGV. It's a very good news because TGV has to improve its energy efficiency, its joint venture, or in partnership with ADEME. It will be possible for us to develop a new generation TGV to replace the TGVs being manufactured between Belfort and La Rochelle. For the regional businesses, our business at Reichshoffen, we are producing a train called Régiolis.
We had a first order of TET, that is to say, Territory Equilibrium Train, 160 km an hour. As you know, the Minister of Transportation announced a budget of EUR 1.5 billion to renew those famous TET trains. Those are the interregional lines like Corail, the night trains, the Corail trains, which are going to be replaced. There are complex discussions, I'm not going to enter into details to know which are the better trains to replace the Corail trains when do we have to replace them. Decisions were supposed to be announced soon by the ministries. When will have the Pendolino between Paris and Brive? This is right at the core of our discussions. The Pendolino is a train manufactured by Alstom in Italy. It drives up to 250 km an hour, in France, the network cannot have this speed.
It is limited to 200 km. You have 170, 160, 110, 160, or 200, or it's a TGV network. Contrary to the car, it's not the same here. We do not have the right network for that compared to Italy. With the SNCF, the state, with us, we are trying to see which would be the best roll stock for the TET. We hope that this discussion will be completed as soon as possible. This way, if we are awarded those contracts, we'll have some workload for our business in Reichshoffen. A point in Valenciennes, the urban segment, as you know, there are major projects. We were awarded a contract to replace the Paris Métro, giving a workload to Valenciennes. We are delivering our ERA, there is a call for tender for a new generation for the RER E.
Allow me to announce because it's brand new, we've just signed today, suburban roll stock, two levels for Brussels called M7, and it will be manufactured in Valenciennes. It is extremely good news for Valenciennes plant. It's a double-deck roll stock. We fight on the French market. We fight for all our French sites, but on the export market as well. It is very true of the components, which are global by definition, and for the complete roll stock market as well. It is not as true, but however, we can have for Brussels or [Cargas] in Valenciennes or the Moroccan TGV or the regional trains in Algeria, we manufacture from France for export. I would like to point out that our headcount, 30%-40% of our headcount works for export. We fight to make sure that we keep our industrial structure. Thank you.
You see that during our discussions, sales continue, and it's a very important, very significant contract, and it's very good news for our order book. Any questions? Yes, a question over there, then we'll take some written questions. We'll try and provide an answer.
Yes. Good afternoon, Commander. I'm President of the Alstom employees and President of the employee shareholding program. My first question is about the appointment of Mr. Olivier Bourges. Is this related to the actual implementation of the OPRA? That is the approval of the first resolution a preamble to the allotment of free shares and to the appointment of Mr. Bourges? Also, can you tell us more about the litigation, about the provision that was added by Bouygues, and whether this has an implication with Mr. Bourges's appointment? Also, whether remunerating the shareholders is a good idea, but perhaps ensuring the future of the company would have been better. Perhaps we should have better left these monies within the group instead of distributing it through the OPRA.
The first speaker seemed to be moved by the find that we could allot to two million of free shares to the employees. In terms of employee loyalty, just to say that shareholders in the last four years received about EUR 1 billion in dividends, and company employees were left aside from this. Loyalty of shareholders is one thing, of employees, it's something else. The employees are the ones who make Alstom what it is today.
We're not going to launch into a discussion as to who is better treated than whom. Shareholders are shareholders, employees are employees, that's all. You have raised technical questions, I'll have to turn to our lawyers. My feeling is this, you see, once again, Mr. Bourges's entry into the board, I hope the capital as well, but to a lesser extent, it seems to me related to an agreement that was signed between Bouygues and the state in the last spring as part of a put option of the capital held by Bouygues to the state.
This is anticipated by a pre-security and an agreement between Bouygues and the state, after which Bouygues will support a resolution that will bring a director proposed by the state into the board, at the same time, replace a Bouygues director by another state director to replace the director that resigns out of the two directors representing Group Bouygues.
These would come into effect after the transaction is carried out, the operation, the OPRA, is performed. To me, these two resolutions are totally independent. They're not conditional one to the other. I may be wrong. We'll see first whether the resolutions are accepted or not. Quite honestly, I think they are totally non-related. You also know that Mrs. Neuville, who had talked to you, had started a procedure disputing the dissociation between the economic rights and governance rights, saying that it's not logical that the state should have governance rights before the decision has been made or not made for it to exercise its option to buy shares. There again, if we are not a party to this process, we've been consulted, we've indicated that we do not object to shareholders being represented to the board as long as their participation is at the right level.
The link with the OPRA is that the problem arises at the shareholders' meeting that approved the operation. The put option that Bouygues has is independent of whether the OPRA takes place or not. I'm satisfied to see that the Chief Legal Officer of Alstom is nodding in approval. Concerning the distribution, it's always too much, or it's never enough. I said right from the start that we're dealing with EUR 304, we have kept it to the lowest point, EUR 3.5. We accepted a concession of EUR 300 million to avoid Brussels being against and to enable GE to have the sufficient level that would kind of ensure that we get the agreement. As a result, we said, "Okay. Well, EUR 3.5, it should be three to 237," we went to the low part.
Now, as a result of this agreement, the company is free of its debt. Volatility is still there, so we don't want to leverage because we don't want to run too high a debt. When the company can decide to exercise the put option, it has a guarantee of a minimum price. This means that if such a decision is made, we'll recover EUR 2.4 billion plus the corresponding escalation, which quite frankly, gives us the means to really play around. There are several questions here on free shares. Whether this will be done after the share capital reduction. Yes, of course. This will take place sometime next year, whereas the share capital reduction will take place before.
There's a question on the governance and diversity of the board of directors. We explained that it is a pity that two foreign ladies are leaving us and thus reducing diversity in gender and nationality of the board. We've taken note of this, and it is indeed better for the company to achieve a certain amount of diversity at the board of directors and make sure that one male French director leaves the company. Another question? Yes. Microphone number two. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman. Before asking a question about strategy, now I didn't know whom to ask, but now I know. I'd like to come back to the last shareholders' meeting. I had not spoken at the time, but your bonus was assessed to, what? EUR 40 billion, or I think it was EUR 4 million instead of EUR 40 million.
I would have preferred that this would have been deserved through an increase in the turnover rather than a decrease by two-thirds of the turnover. However, I'd like to congratulate you because you never get any congratulations, do you? This bonus you did deserve when you took over Alstom in 2003. At the time, the shareholders' meeting, if you remember, lasted for 5 hours. Out of which 3 hours spent in questions. This means that this boss really takes shareholders seriously because last time we had a shareholder who'd say to you, "You don't give a damn about shareholders." I don't think this is true, and I'm sure I'm not the only one to think that. This is something that I wanted to tell you before you leave. To my issue about strategy.
I didn't know whether to ask it to you or the future chairman. He is here next to you, why not? It concerns the possible development through external growth for Alstom. Alstom's perimeter is smaller. It's a small company that could be bought on the stock exchange or perhaps acquired for a merger. You have reduced the debt. It's nil now, so it is possible to run a debt again and call onto the market to do so. I'd like to know what, if this happens, what will become of the investment into a joint company, into joint ventures with GE. I wanted to know whether such investment in joint venture will remain alive as Nestlé and L'Oréal and L'Oréal and Sanofi. I'd like to give a few figures.
The three joint ventures, two of the three have an operating margin which is higher than the operating margin in rail segment. For a gas turbine, it's 7%, whereas rail, last year, showed an operating margin of 3%, 4% with an objective of 4%. In case of an external growth operation, a major operation, whether you may not sacrifice this investment or this involvement into these joint ventures that are more profitable than the rail business. A debate has taken place, and you may remember that I was welcomed with a few comments and shareholders made their opinion known. You know that also the remuneration of the corporate officers are to be voted by the shareholders. The shareholders that attended voted of more than 80%. Some people bark, others vote. Thank you for your kind comments about the shareholders' meeting 2003.
I'd like to link up with this because you see the company could be now bought on the stock exchange. Perhaps, yes, we have sold two-thirds of our turnover, but this was a weakness for Alstom. This business is now stronger in its new perimeter, and the remaining third is much stronger following this operation and has the means to conduct an an ambitious development policy. I am proud that this operation has been concluded positively with your support and despite the few nasty comments that I received in these tough 18 months. The problem with this type of operation is the duration. For 18 months, customers were legitimately in a situation that they had to wait or rather than order. Why order a turbine if you don't know what is the policy to be in the future? Clients did the same, and so did employees.
We used a large quantity of cash. It was very difficult to manage the teams. 12 and 18 months is not adapted to the speed of the economic world in which we're working. Again, joint ventures and external growth. Joint ventures. That was one of the conditions that had been set by the government in order to approve the operation. There was a decree that authorized the government to veto the operation. We proposed this in an agreement that we put to GE, and they accepted it. We accepted also because this was an operation that was under GE's operational control. We have governance rights, of course, but it's quite clear right from its inception, if you look at the report that was submitted to you in December 2014.
We're protected, and we have the possibility of recovering our investment. We're entitled to participate in a capital gain, if any, without risking a capital loss because we have this guarantee. This guarantee applies only if we do exercise our possible call options. The board of directors will have to decide whether they do exercise these rights. Amongst the elements that will be considered in the decision is, in particular, the uses that could be made of these monies for external growth. External growth itself, you have to realize, as Mr. Papin said earlier, there will be opportunities, but we have to see whether one plus one is more than two, because this is the criterion.
If you look at projects like India, where we sign a joint venture with Indian Railways, where we are going to invest and create a factory in a state in India, for 10 years, we'll be producing for more than EUR 3.5 billion of equipment. Do you think this is of a different nature than buying an Indian company? There is a gray area between make or buy, and there are cases when you say, look, in Russia, we said, "Okay, we're buying 25% in Transmashholding." In South Africa, we said it and say we buy, we constructed a factory, we invest, and we're developing something that will mainly belong to us. In India, it's yet another different model. We have to adjust to the environment we're working in.
What is absolutely essential in this work is that there are opportunities everywhere in developed countries, our reference markets, in emerging countries where we are developing, and that we get because and we have the means to succeed there. We can't afford to be dogmatic between we buy or we make. It depends on each individual cases. There are contracts where we make on our own. There are cases where we make with the partners, the contracts we've won. In South Africa, we make on our own. In the contract in Belgium, we do with a major, as a consortium with a major actor that we can't reveal yet. We have to adapt to the market conditions. Joint ventures are joint ventures where we will decide whether we sell or not. It's in our hands.
If we sell, we have a guarantee that capital will be maintained, which is quite good. We have control, 100% control, and we have a guarantee that we're not going to lose by it in any way. Good afternoon, Marie-Jeanne Pasquet. I'm a founder of the site minority.com. I have two questions, one on the resolution about Mr. Bourges's appointment. This resolution is an external resolution that was tabled by Bouygues, and normally the Board of Directors has to say whether they are for or against, and the Board of Directors has not offered an opinion, and that's the first time ever, which means that it has shirked its responsibility. If the courts of justice consider that the agreement between the state and Bouygues is correct, then Mr. Bourges will have to be appointed, otherwise he won't. Why did not the Board express its opinion?
Most of the time, the people who assign a power of attorney to the chairman expect the chairman to vote like the Board of Directors. I'd like Mr. Kron to know what you're going to vote to this resolution, and if your vote is blank, that will be a first. Second question about free shares. You don't want to speak about that, but yet they are free shares that are paid by the shareholders in the form of dilution at a capital increase with a subscription right or a waiver of the shares to the employees. They are free shares. Since the Macron Law, we have seen that EUR 1.6 billion were authorized by the shareholders meetings, and that's a great amount. There should be EUR 4 billion-EUR 5 billion by the end of June after all the shareholders meetings.
For Alstom, it's about EUR 140 million, 6 for Alstom's leaders, and the least you could do is to give us a few details. I've read all the documents, and I couldn't find any detail. EUR 100 million are going to get out of the shareholders' pockets. I'd like to know where these shares will go to. You say 2% of the employees. It seems enormous for 2% of the employees. Before that, there was an allotment of free shares that had been voted for 2 million shares. The company then was divided by a factor of three or four, and today it's 5 million shares. Quite a jump. You may have an explanation for this. You will say what performance criteria will be expected from the employees, and why you grant these shares.
At Dassault Systèmes, the criteria would be for the leaders to take over from the Dassault Group and become major shareholders. At Scor, there was a huge turnover, and they wanted to retain the staff that are very technical. Maybe you want to motivate the staff, Mr. Poupart-Lafarge, is the only way you can motivate your employees is to use carrots, then you're dealing with donkeys. In which case, you'd better replace your employees. These donkeys are pulling the trains because they get EUR 27 billion in orders. As to your first question, the question is crystal clear. The Board of Directors has not approved the resolution presented by Bouygues, otherwise, the board would have said so.
The board said it would be up to the shareholders to vote for or against this resolution, a vote by correspondence would be those that will not be in favor of this resolution. The votes that by proxy. As to Mr. Bourges's election, it's very simple, dear lady. Either there's 50.01% of the votes in favor of the resolution, in which case Mr. Bourges will be welcomed at the board, or the figure will not be reached, in which case the resolution will not be passed.
I answered. Votes by correspondence, by mail, votes to the president will not back this. The proxy will not recommend or back this proposal. I do not hear, I agree. The board said they will not take a position, you know very well that we count the number of votes in favor. The board will not vote in favor. I will not vote in favor. Second point on the AGA. There are provisions, shareholders meetings vote on this because the Macron Law simplified the mode of allocation of free shares. What the shareholders meeting do is that they cancel the former attributions, which we did, and that we vote on those free shares.
Those free shares can be called performance shares, the way we want, but those free shares are submitted to, and that's been the case up until now and in the future, submitted to performance conditions. Those performance conditions will be assessed over a minimum period of 3 years. After those 3 years, shares will be or will not be attributed. You saw 2%, I don't know whether it's a lot or not. The benchmark at Alstom was that, and has been that for years and years. We said that we would apply the same grade to transport with the same order of magnitude. There is a provision according to which the performance shares are not submitted to terms and conditions. It's in the case of a general program. It's applicable to the whole staff, and a general program involves at least 50% of the headcount.
In such a case, it will be submitted to conditions of presence and not performance, and the top management of the company will not sign these programs.
Good afternoon. [Flebine Wezot], individual shareholder. I have a question. The market you could address. You were saying that the only easy markets are the markets of your competitors. No, the other markets. My question is, are you going to benefit from your new financial situation to acquire those new markets? My second question has to do with the catalyst. You mentioned your new range of products. Can you give us an idea about the growth of revenues for 2016? Thank you. There is no easy market, of course. What Alstom succeeded in doing well is to continue working on our existing markets while conquering new markets. Two examples. South Africa. We had not a significant footprint, whereas now we have a contract of over EUR 4 billion. India, a large rail country.
Our position was almost marginal, not because of a lack of competence, but because Indian Railways not only transported passengers, but manufactured trains, and they did everything.
Bred the hens, and the eggs were served onboard the train. They did everything, but they decided to focus on the passenger transport, and they asked experts like us to focus on trains. Now we have EUR 4 billion with the plants we built near Shanghai for urban transport. Awarded with the first contract, then a second, then a third. Tramways and metros and locomotives. You see, we have this growth, and of course, we need financial means for that, the necessary means, and we have them. As to the development of our revenues, we gave a midterm guidance of about 5% growth rate per year on organic growth. For the first term, it's four. It's that order of magnitude. It is more than the underlying trend of the market. We believe that we can gain market shares on these growing markets. Number two.
Yes, go ahead. Yes, number four, question number four. Good afternoon. Claire Lepelletier, employee, shareholder, and Alstom Saint-Ouen. I have a question to Henri Poupart-Lafarge. The Vision 2020, you shared this vision with us this year, and one pillar is agility and entrepreneurship. I fully subscribe to this vision, but we have to realize that in our daily life, it remains difficult because our company is sized for large markets. There are processes, and overnight it's not that easy to diversify and to address the smaller markets with a greater degree of responsiveness and innovations. Beyond the mindset, and I hope this mindset is going to percolate, could you please tell us concretely how we can move from this so-called institutional Alstom to this more agile and entrepreneurial Alstom? Patrick. Thank you. Thank you for this question.
I had not planned to detail the strategy Alstom 2020 in front of you today, but indeed, one of our pillars of our strategy regards the mindset and the culture of the company to make it more collaborative, more entrepreneurial, and more diversified. Two major aspects. A commercial one, and yesterday was in Russia, and I discussed with one colleague, and he said to me that since the implementation of the new organization, what we call the new organization is a center in charge of products and processes and geographic organizations in charge of sales and execution. He felt a mindset and an energy, an additional one in the field to get contracts and the latest commercials success stories are linked to this organization and dynamism in this region. What you're saying is true.
It is easier to motivate sales organizations when it's a large contract, but it is not necessarily the bread and butter of Alstom, and we have to look for smaller contracts on a daily basis in the field of service and signaling. We have not solved this problem. We are working at it, and we have to have a more capillary fabric. That is to say that sales force should be local. They should be able, locally, to make decisions to take small orders. We have the example of GE Signaling. GE Signaling joining us is extremely good at selling small products, and we're going to look, benchmark, and see how they do and how we can empower those local sales force in order to do their own business and to secure their future. This entrepreneurial spirit has to be circulated everywhere. I agree with you.
If you are at Saint-Ouen three or four days ago, we had this Innov you! innovation program. You may have had the opportunity to look at the latest innovations, and one of the winners, you see that on the train one day. Instead of having loudspeakers on the trains, which by definition could be fragile and deteriorated, someone in Valenciennes invented the way of making sure that the panels of a train themselves vibrate, and the announcement and music can be circulated via the panels and not the loudspeakers. I discussed with this person, the winner, and the winner said, well, he invented that during the weekend at home. It's a very clever way. It will save us money.
If you go to Saint-Ouen, if you are at Saint-Ouen, I hope that you've seen all these innovations, I hope that you can recognize that yes, there's a spirit of innovation and an entrepreneurial mindset, and we have to promote this. Okay. Fine. Question? Yes, please go ahead. Miss Luchet, an individual shareholder. Could you please remind us of the taxation conditions of this public share buyback offer, capital gains, capital losses? Another question, you said it's not topical, but to take over Bombardier would be quite something vis-à-vis Siemens, and the takeover by the Americans of Faiveley. Is it a problem to you? The final question is on the joint ventures. There's something I do not understand.
The state has imposed upon you the fact that you have to set up joint ventures, here you seem to say that you may sell them, it all depends on you. What about the role of the state? Has it disappeared or. Thank you.
Regarding taxation on the OPRA transaction. Indeed, it's like selling a share, with a share price and so on. What happens that the document that you have, the registration document, gives you the details of certain elements, and your financial intermediaries will explain this when you get the document. It's of a similar nature as though you were selling on the market, on the stock exchange, the same type of taxation. Now, regarding your second point about Bombardier and Faiveley. The problem doesn't arise. We have enough headaches with what issues arise. There are, with Bombardier, a number of recoveries that should be analyzed in detail. As long as we have not looked into it, we can't say anything, and we can't draw any conclusions. I don't know why this came about. It came because there were speculations about Bombardier's strategy.
It's not in my habits to speculate about the competitor's strategy. If the cases arise, we'll see. The aspect on the right of free competition is one aspect that we'll look into. Joint venture. It should be clear. At the state's request, we signed agreements with GE, whereby we would reinvest part of the proceeds into a joint venture. Limited part. GE is a majority shareholder in this joint venture, which is absolutely indispensable for this joint venture's future because we had not got the critical size ourselves. They are connected to GE's strike powers, but we have a right to get our investment back, and we could accept this because we had the possible liquidity. The answer to your question is easy. We have rights, and we have no duties, no obligation.
The board will decide when the windows will open for the possibilities of selling in the coming years, whether it's in the company's interest to do or not to do, to sell or not to sell. If we decide to do, we'll sure do it at a guaranteed price. If the board decides not to exercise this right, it won't. The other question. To Mr. Poupart-Lafarge. The Wabtec operation. Well, it's nothing too bad. Faiveley is one of our main partners. The passenger business of Faiveley will still be headed by Stéphane Rambaud-Measson. Sorry. The Wabtec passenger business, that is Faiveley plus the passenger part for Wabtec, will be led by Stéphane Rambaud-Measson, who was the former number one at Faiveley and former Alstom, and will be based in Paris. We'll keep the same partnership as we did in the past with Faiveley.
It's nothing exclusive. We have other suppliers, of course, we want to keep as close to Faiveley in the future as we are today. Well, we'll take another two or three questions, then we'll vote. We'll take a couple of questions. Okay. Short questions and short answers. Yes, one, sir.
Yes. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to come back to this issue of transferring the head office. I know that Saint-Ouen is being renovated. Nice buildings are being built in Saint-Ouen. In terms of the environment, I don't know whether everybody will be happy with this transfer, because we can hear on many occasions, very unfavorable comments about the sector where in some areas people are afraid. They are terrorized. Is it a good political choice? Is it a political choice? Why is it that we're being transferred over there?
Very brief answer, because it's not an essential question, if you'll allow me to say. At Levallois, the building at Levallois was transferred to GE, all the teams working in France that have been in building beautiful buildings at Saint-Ouen. I used to be at Levallois, I'm now at Saint-Ouen. Well, it's a bit further from where I live, but never mind. It's very nice. Moving from this transfer is not going to be a major concern of the staff or the shareholders. We have 2,500 people working in Saint-Ouen. They've been working there and surviving there very nicely for 20 years now. Okay. You have the metro line number 13 that goes there. Don't worry. Okay. One more, otherwise I'll be told off. Good afternoon. I want to return to the OPRA and the 29.40%. Does this apply to all shares?
How many shares? This is how it works, sir. Your financial intermediaries will explain better. You have the right to put into the OPRA as many shares as you wish. If you don't have any, that's easy. If you do have some, you have to decide how many, then you will be served depending on the total number of options of shares that you hold and you accept to keep holding during the operation. If you have 100 shares. This doesn't answer your question. Everybody understands this. How many shares? 91.5 million shares out of 310 will take up 29.5%. That is 91.5 million out of 310 million. The state has one option. One share, sorry. Bouygues intends to bring over a number of shares that will enable them to remain at the same level as they are today.
I see that foreigners are excluded. No, nobody's excluded. Yes, it's reserved to France. The Spanish, the Italians, the Brits, do they have the right? The only ones who cannot bring their shares directly are those for whom specific national laws apply. Let's be clear. In the U.S., any operation that involves American holders supposes that we have to go through a whole series of procedures that we have not deployed. I don't think that this measure is discriminating against the Belgians, the Italians, or anybody else. This means that some people would be excluded. Well, I don't know exactly how the shares of our American shareholders are held. If they are registered in the U.S., they won't be able to bring their shares. You know that our Anglo-Saxon shareholders hold their shares in London. No, sorry.
If you need questions, you have these ladies over there available all evening to answer this type of question. Right. Number 3, then one last one, otherwise I've survived these meetings 16 times. I hope I'll survive this one. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'm Jeanne Decoux, individual shareholder. I come back to the present economic circumstances. I'd like to know what is your position for the short-term and long-term future. How do you see the competition of road transport? SNCF itself will start having crosslinks in France and other private companies that were doing well will be competitors in the future. Could you explain what is your position regarding this fact? Our main objective and our prime objective is to improve the appeal of rail transportation.
We'll work on this night and day to see how we can improve our products and make them more efficient from the point of view of environment as well. Also energy efficiency, how we can optimize the system with better signaling solutions and so on. To improve the appeal of rail transport. We are also careful and look to see that different modes of transport can be complementary. If they are to be competitors, they have to be competing on the same footing. We take care that competition should be as perfect as possible. In most cases, we should not try to set the modes of transport in opposition. Sometimes road transport is more adequate in low-density areas. Railways are better suited to high-density populations, such as cities.
All the different modes of transport participate in overall mobility, and we'll try to make the rail transport more attractive, and that's it. For urban transport, it's exactly the same. We can't say that the metro is the enemy of cars or buses or whatever. It depends on the cities and the situations. We have to find the best multimodal system and the best balance between passenger cars, buses, metros, and so on. Last question. No, that's it? Yes, sir.
Yes. I have a question about technology transfers. You probably know about that because French nuclear power plants were technology that were stolen by Alstom from the Americans. Don't you think that your technology could be stolen from you in the medium term by the Chinese? The Chinese don't need a market. They have a market. You need a market. What the Chinese are missing is the technology.
The joint venture is the best way to steal technology. You did it with the Americans, and the Chinese are no more stupid than we are. In the short term, it could be beneficial, but in the medium or long term, it's just daylight robbery. Well, sir, we don't want to be too clear-cut. I don't know exactly what you said about nuclear power plants, but the reactors that were made by Alstom was American technology stolen by Alstom. Well, never mind. Let's come back to rail transport. In China, there were calls for tenders 10 years ago for TGVs, and rightly or wrongly, it was decided that we were not very good on these tenders and on this tender call, and we decided not to tender. The Japanese did it. It's their own business, not ours. What do the Chinese do?
They try indeed to negotiate access to a considerable market against access to technology. We're no stupider, no sillier than anybody else, and we look on a case-by-case basis where the company's interest lies in the long term. Sometimes there are partnerships that are worth going into and others that are not, as was the case for the very high-speed train in China because we didn't want to go into this niche at the time. It's not a matter of us stealing technology. Sometimes we're prepared to share, and on what basis, what do we have in the pipeline to prepare for the next competitive advantage and see what the market could offer us as a matter of compensation. Very last question before we vote. Yes. My question to the future chairman, [Jean-Pierre Claris in Bordeaux].
I think that the economic experts did not see that indeed regional elections had signed an agreement with The Greens. He signed a decree whereby he would no longer finance the two LGV lines from Bordeaux and Toulouse, and Bordeaux, Dax to Madrid and Spain. What do you intend to do? I was not aware of this signing, signature. I'll destroy myth. A new TGV infrastructure does not produce for Alstom a huge additional business all of a sudden. That's why I do not pay attention to that on a day-to-day basis. It's a very long period. You know that the opening of Paris-Bordeaux
We'll reduce the number of TGV and not increase the number of trains. Why? Because they already have Paris-Bordeaux in three hours. In the future, it will be in two hours. The day the line opens, of course, the capacity of one TGV will be increased by 30%, just a single rolling stock. From time to time, I hear that we produce TGV lines to keep Alstom busy. I don't think so. You have the infrastructure network. The TGV network has to grow gradually, and then the optimization of rolling stock, and this is another topic. It is a more general topic. To answer your question concretely, we'll do nothing. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, I suggest we consider that the discussion is completed, and I suggest we move on to the vote on the resolutions.
First, we're going to present the voting procedure, Pierrick Le Goff, could you please introduce us to the electronic voting box procedure with a small film on the vote, then we'll see the resolutions.
Ladies and gentlemen, the voting box given to you is strictly personal. The number of votes you have or you represent is in the box and displayed on the screen. You will just have to use the green, yellow, and red keys. The green key corresponds to a vote in favor. When it's yellow, it corresponds to an abstention, and when it's red, it corresponds to a vote against. After having read each resolution, the vote will proceed to the vote and will declare the poll is open. At that moment, you will see on the screen a rectangle indicating the countdown, the number of seconds you have at your disposal to vote.
When the countdown is over, the poll will be closed as announced, it will be no longer possible to vote. The display of the results will be on the screen just a few seconds after the completion of the poll. Please make sure that you switch off your mobile phone during the vote, and that you hand back those voting boxes at the exit. Thank you. Thank you. I would like to ask our secretary to proceed to the vote. Thank you, Chairman. As indicated at the beginning of the shareholder meeting, the quorum required is 20% for the ordinary part and 25% for the extraordinary part. The final state of the attendance list shows that the present or represented shareholders, or having voted remotely, hold 52.76% of shares having the voting right. The quorum required is therefore achieved and exceeded.
Resolutions will have to be adopted with a majority of votes of the shareholders present, represented, or voting remotely for the ordinary part and a majority of two-thirds for the extraordinary meeting. I suggest we present a summary of each resolution, provided that no one asks for a full reading. The full text of resolutions are on page 20 and 21 of the notice of meeting. There is no objection. Therefore, I will present the resolutions, I invite you to vote as soon as I have said the poll is open. First resolution, extraordinary part.
This resolution is a public share buyback. For this first resolution, we ask you to authorize a share capital reduction in a maximum nominal amount of EUR 640,500,000 via a company share buyback followed by a cancellation of such repurchased shares and authorization granted to the Board of Directors for the purpose of formulating a public buyback offer targeting all shareholders carrying out the share capital reduction and setting its final amount. Please vote. Vote over. Voting over. This resolution is carried over. Let's move on to the second resolution, extraordinary part. This resolution is as follows: authorization to the Board of Directors to make free allotments of existing or future shares of the company up to a limit of 5 million shares, of which a maximum amount of 200,000 shares to corporate officers of the company. Automatic waiver by the shareholders of their preferential subscription rights.
The second resolution proposes to authorize the Board of Directors to make free allotments. The vote is open. Voting over. The second resolution is carried with 78.94%. Let's move on to the ordinary part of our shareholders' meeting. Third resolution, ratification of the transfer of the registered office of Levallois to Saint-Ouen. Please vote. Voting over. Third resolution carried with 99.86%. Let's move on to the fourth resolution, ordinary part. The appointment of Olivier Bourges as director. In this fourth resolution, we ask you to express your opinion on the appointment of Olivier Bourges as a director. This resolution was presented by the big company. Please vote. Voting over. This fourth resolution carried with 66.22%. Fifth and final resolution, ordinary part. This resolution, that is the powers for the execution of formalities.
In this fifth resolution and final resolution, we ask you to give the right powers to execute the legal formalities for this shareholders' meeting. Please vote. Voting over. This fifth resolution and final resolution is carried with 99.88%. This was to complete the formalities. Thank you, our secretary and the hostesses at your disposal in the lobby to get back the voting boxes. Before winding up the meeting, I would like to thank you very much, you members of the meeting and shareholders, for your attendance and for your trust. The agenda is now over, and I am going to wind up the meeting.