Ladies and gentlemen, Mesdames et messieurs, I hereby declare open the 2020 Ordinary and Extraordinary Annual Shareholders Meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech SA. My name is Joachim Kreuzburg, and as Chairman of the Board of Directors, I will chair this meeting. Given the current context of the pandemic crisis and to protect our shareholders, our employees, and our service providers, this annual shareholders meeting will exceptionally take place in camera. That is, in the physical absence of our shareholders, as provided by Article 4 of the Ordinance 2020/321 of 25 March 2020. I would like to thank all shareholders who cast their vote remotely ahead of the ASM, and I also would like to thank all those who are now following this live on the Internet. Further, this webcast will remain available also after the transmission.
Indeed, I think this new format could also offer the potential to facilitate a higher level of presence and participation of shareholders in future annual meetings. Next to me are René Fáber, Member of the Board of Directors of Sartorius Stedim Biotech, Jens Adler, Head of Legal Affairs and Compliance, and Benedikt Dorzelek, Head of Investor Relations. We now need to appoint the officers of this assembly. I would like to appoint Benedikt Dorzelek as Secretary of the AGM, and under Article 8 of the Decree of April 10, 2020, I asked René Fáber and Jens Adler to act as scrutineers, which they accepted to do. We also have our auditors following this live on teleconference. Now, I have to inform you about quite several formalities.
As it is impossible for the shareholders to be physically present because of the sanitary precautions implemented by the authorities involved in the fight against COVID-19, shareholders were asked to cast their vote remotely ahead of the AGM by post using the respective voting form. Based on the attendance list, participating shareholders represent more than one-fifth of the shares with voting rights, so that we've got the quorum to hold the shareholder meeting as follows. Voting rights represented are 150,891,168 of a total number of voting rights of 160,970,738. The number of shares represented is 82,439,070, whereas the total number of shares is 92,180,190. As the quorum is final, the AGM is in the legal position to vote.
With regard to convening the annual combined shareholders meeting, the agenda and the resolutions were published in the BALO, the Bulletin Number 20 of the BALO of February 14, 2020. In the Bulletin Number 30 of the BALO of March 9, 2020. As well as in the legal newspaper La Provence on the same day, March 9, 2020. Other information is taken from the 2019 Universal Registration Document. All documents required by law, which you may have received from BNP Paribas or your financial intermediary, are available during the meeting. No draft resolutions or new items on the agenda were requested. I will now introduce the agenda of today's annual combined shareholders meeting. Under the competence of the ordinary shareholders meeting, we have a number of items.
The first is the reading of three reports of the Board of Directors, respectively the Management Report on the Financial Statements Incorporating Group's Report, the General Meetings Proposed Resolutions Report, and the Corporate Governance Report. Second item, the reading of three reports of the statutory auditors, respectively the report on the financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2019, the report on the consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2019, and the report on the regulated agreements covered by Article L225-38 and subsequent of the French Commercial Code. Third item, approval of financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2019 and discharge to all directors. This is Resolution Number 1. Fourth item, approval of the consolidated financial statements for the year ended 31 December 2019, and this is Resolution Number 2.
The fifth item is the assignment of the financial result for the year ended 31 December 2019. Resolution Number 3 is covering this topic. The sixth item is the approval of regulated agreements and commitments covered by Article L225-38 and subsequent of the French Commercial Code, and Resolution Number 4 is about this item. The seventh item is the setting of the annual directors' fees. Resolution Number 5 is about this, and the eighth item is the approval of the information mentioned in the Article L225-37-31 of the French Commercial Code concerning the remuneration due or awarded to the corporate officers for the 2019 financial year. Resolution Number 6 relates to this.
The ninth item is the approval of the fixed, variable, and extraordinary components of the remuneration and the benefits of all kinds due or awarded to the Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer for the 2019 financial year. Resolution Number 7 is on this topic. The tenth one is the approval of the corporate officers' compensation policy. Resolution Number 8. The eleventh item is the authorization granted to the Board of Directors to enable the company to trade in its own shares. Resolution Number 9 is about this, and the twelfth item then is the proxy to carry out formalities. Resolution Number 10 is related to this. Under the competence of the extraordinary shareholder meeting, we have the following items. Thirteenth, reading of the report of the Board of Directors on the proposed resolutions.
Number 14, there are nine delegations of authority granted to the Board of Directors, and they are basically in four groups of such delegations, and the first two have a few subgroups. So, firstly, to issue shares and/or securities giving access to the share capital of the company and/or securities giving the right to the allotment of that instrument, respectively. First one, with preferential subscription rights of the shareholders. Resolution Number 11. Second, without preferential subscription rights to the shareholders through public offerings other than those referred to in the Article L411-2 of the French Monetary and Financial Code. Resolution Number 12. Third one, without the preferential subscription right of the shareholders through public offers addressed exclusively to qualified investors or to a restricted circle of investors as defined in the Article L411-2 of the French Monetary and Financial Code. Resolution Number 13. Second group of authorities.
So, secondly, to increase or decide to issue shares and/or securities giving or capable of giving access to the share capital of the company, respectively. First, in case of share capital increase with or without preferential subscription rights of the shareholders. Resolution Number 14. Second one, as consideration for contributions in kind in shares and/or securities giving or capable of giving access to capital without preferential subscription rights of shareholders. Resolution Number 15. Through the capitalization of reserves, earnings, or premiums, or any other sum upon which capitalization would be permitted. Resolution Number 16. And then reserved for members of company savings plans without preferential subscription rights of the shareholders. Resolution Number 17. And then we have the third group, which is just one, and that is to reduce the capital by canceling shares acquired under a buyback program. Resolution Number 18.
Finally, as a fourth one, to grant free, new, or existing shares to the benefit of employees or corporate officers in the limit of 10% of the capital. Resolution Number 19. The fifteenth item on the agenda is the compliance upgrade of the bylaws, subsequent amendment of Article 15 of the bylaws. Resolution Number 20. The sixteenth topic, and last one, is the proxy to carry out formalities. Resolution Number 21 relates to this item. Ladies and gentlemen, we have prepared a presentation that includes information about the activity of the Sartorius Stedim Biotech Group, including the main results for fiscal 2019 and some additional information on the parent company as well, which is Sartorius Stedim Biotech SA. I thought it might be helpful to give you an overview of the main topics before moving forward with the formal part of our combined shareholders meeting.
So, I would like to now cover in my presentation actually the main results and achievements during fiscal 2019, for sure. I also would like to present on the dividend proposal and, of course, also talk about our midterm agenda and perspectives. However, before I start my presentation, I have to make you aware that this presentation contains statements concerning the future performance of Sartorius Stedim Biotech and that these statements are based on a couple of assumptions and estimates, and, of course, such assumptions contain uncertainties and risks, and therefore we cannot guarantee that the forward-looking statements that we are making here will actually materialize. Further, before I move on and present on the main results of 2019, I would like to update you on how we are navigating through the pandemic crisis so far.
We have a clear set of priorities, and the number one that we will never compromise on is the safety of all of our more than 6,000 employees. The second one is that we are fully committed to being able to deliver the goods that our customers need and expect to receive from us. And thirdly, we have a close eye on the financial stability and strength of the group, for sure. In doing so, we are, of course, facing a couple of challenges also going forward, we believe. One for sure is that it cannot be excluded that there will be a second wave of infection in a couple of countries globally. I think you are all aware of that. We also clearly see signs of global recessions already in a couple of industries, which also brings along a couple of uncertainties, at least also for our business.
And then, of course, there might be also a couple of longer-term changes that we might have to adapt to. And then, very specifically in our case, we have closed two acquisitions within the last six months, and we are pretty much in a remote integration mode now, which is working very well, but nevertheless is a challenge by itself, as you can imagine. I also would like to highlight from a different angle that Sartorius Stedim Biotech, since many years, has a very strong business in the vaccine segment of our industry. I think it's fair to say that only a small number of vaccines are probably developed and manufactured without Sartorius technology. And this is also the case now regarding the large number of new vaccines that are under development against the coronavirus. So, we believe that we are really able and do contribute already to this undertaking.
Finally, what I want to highlight is that the last couple of months, for sure, have been a very challenging and intense time for many of us. However, it also has been a very rewarding and very positive experience, I have to say, because of the strong team spirit that we have seen across companies, within the company, for sure. And that's why I want to thank all of our customers for their tremendous trust that they put in us, to our suppliers who are supporting our business very much, and last but for sure not least, to all of our employees for keeping our business running so well. Let's turn the perspective to 2019. We have seen another year of very dynamic, profitable growth. Indeed, we were able to even overachieve the upgraded forecast that we were giving around the mid of last year.
We also were able to agree upon two strategically very important acquisitions. Both are closed by now. One we closed shortly before the end of last year, the other one by the beginning of May of this year. I will talk about that in a minute, and finally, I think overall we were able to expand our strong position as a technology partner and supplier to the biopharmaceutical industry. Let's have a look on the financial results in some more detail. Sales revenue is up by 17% and achieved EUR 1.44 billion. Order intake came in even around EUR 100 million above that number. The key profitability figure, our underlying EBITDA, came in at a margin of 29.3%, which is 1.1 percentage point above previous year's figure, and earnings per share were up by almost 20% to EUR 2.85.
From a geographical perspective, growth was the strongest in Asia-Pacific with almost 24%, followed by the Americas with around 17% and Europe with 13%. And all these numbers represent very strong performances in the respective geographies, I believe. However, we are continuing to head towards a more balanced geographical distribution, as you can see in the pie chart on the right-hand side of this chart. Our balance sheet remains very strong as well. You see that our equity ratio is at almost 65%, and our net debt is at just 108 million EUR by end of the year. As you can imagine, the closing of the transaction of the one transaction that I mentioned that I will talk about in a minute is not yet included here. However, net debt to underlying EBITDA was at 0.3, so very robust numbers.
And you can also see on the right-hand side of this chart that the CapEx ratio went down, as expected, to 9.4% after the peak of 14.5% the year before when we were executing on quite a significant number of larger capacity expansions globally. Now, I would like to shift the perspective just briefly on the balance sheet of our parent company, which is also very robust and strong. The key figure here is the equity ratio, which stands or stood at the end of last year at 56%, a very robust number, as I already said. So, let's have a look on another, I think, very positive aspect of last year, and that is that we, again, were able to create a substantial number of new jobs. We added 600 new jobs almost during last year, 6,200 at the end of last year.
What is very also important to note is that we are still having around 70% of our employees in Europe because we have our main manufacturing sites in Europe. However, it's clearly the case that we will see an increasing number of employees and a more balanced perspective going forward as we are investing also very much in the Americas and Asia-Pacific regarding our footprint. Also regarding employees, as we are adding such a substantial number of employees every year, not just last year, what you can see here is that we have a very young age distribution in the group. The majority of our employees, 45%, are younger than 40 years, which is a remarkable number, I believe.
Then, of course, to this, it corresponds also what you see on the left side of this chart, and that is that the majority, or 51% precisely, of our employees are working for Sartorius Stedim Biotech for just up to five years. However, quite a significant number of these employees have worked in the industry before, so they contribute also quite a lot of experience and fresh ideas. However, we also have more than 1,000 employees representing 17% of all who are working for the group for more than 15 years already. I already mentioned a few times the acquisitions that we are agreeing upon in the course of last year. Let me start with the one of the Israeli company Biological Industries. You see a picture of their products in the middle of the lower part of that chart now.
And Biological Industries is a leader in cell culture media, particularly for gene and cell therapy applications, but it's also a great platform and hub for us now to build and expand our manufacturing footprint and also product development capabilities in other areas of applications of cell culture media. We are very happy about this very complementary acquisition. And then a very significant one for sure was the acquisition of life science assets, selected life science assets from the portfolio of Danaher. Maybe the most important one you see in the upper part of this chart, and that is the portfolio in the domain of chromatography, covering systems, columns, as well as resins indeed. Also, we were able to add cross-flow systems. So, these two segments really strengthen our positioning in the downstream processing arena very significantly.
And a smaller part of the portfolio that we were able to acquire is the business of microcarriers. One key application is here in the domain of cell culture processes, but also in some others. Very happy about these highly complementary acquisitions that fit perfectly into the pattern of our acquisitions, as you might be aware of. So, before I present the outlook for 2020, and as we are now three months later than we initially wanted to be with our annual shareholder meeting, I'm now in the position and would like to briefly talk about the results for the first quarter of 2020 here as well. We had a very strong start into the year. I think that's fair to say. Top-line growth was 22% approximately. We achieved EUR 422 million of sales revenues. Order intake came in significantly higher than that, more than EUR 100 million higher, actually.
Growth rate was around 39%. It needs to be said that the comps from the previous year were maybe a little bit easier than the average of last year's numbers were, but nevertheless, really a very dynamic start into 2020. EBITDA margin up by 1.4 percentage points, reaching 30%, and also earnings per share up significantly to €0.87. Based on this start into the year, we do have a very positive outlook for 2020. Even though we, of course, do see significant uncertainties and higher uncertainties than in average years, I elaborated on that already. We did incorporate into this outlook now also the two acquisitions that I mentioned. More specifically, the acquisition of Biological Industries.
We expect to add 2 percentage points of non-organic growth, whereas the Danaher assets that we added for the eight months that we will consolidate them should add around 3 percentage points of non-organic growth. And in total, we are planning to achieve a top-line growth of 17%-21%. We are also shooting for an underlying EBITDA margin of 30%, which is to some extent fueled by substantial economies of scale, but diluted to some extent through the lower margin of Biological Industries and Danaher for the time being. This dilution will not take very long, but nevertheless, plays a role in the year 2020, we believe.
CapEx ratio, we plan to be at 8%, and we also believe that now, after the closing of the Danaher transaction, the net debt to underlying EBITDA ratio will go up a little bit and should come in around 0.5 after 0.3 for the year 2019. Since the beginning of 2019, also the shares have risen substantially and stronger than the market on average. As you can see, the performance for 2019 has been around plus 16.9%, around 45-50 percentage points above the comparable indices, and also the development in 2020 so far was significantly above the average market. Now, I would like to introduce and explain our dividend proposal to you for fiscal 2019. As you know, we have adjusted the initial dividend proposal because of the ongoing pandemic crisis, and there were three considerations that basically have led us in our decision to adopt our proposal.
The first one is about risk aversion, pretty much given the uncertainties and risks in the industries. The second one is about, you could say, entrepreneurial or strategic opportunities. So, we believe that there may be opportunities to add technologies, complementary technologies, and strengthen our portfolio further in these times. And then thirdly, it's about social responsibility. We take action to support people and institutions who have been either hit by this very difficult situation very much or who play a key role in fighting the pandemic crisis in these years. However, this decision to adopt our dividend proposal for 2019 doesn't mean that we have changed our general dividend policy at all. So, specifically, our proposal is to pay EUR 0.34 per share after EUR 0.57 for the year 2018.
That would mean a total profit distribution of EUR 31 million and would equal a payout ratio of just below 12%, following 24% for the year 2018. Ladies and gentlemen, now I would like to shift gears a little bit and would like to spend a couple of minutes and ten seconds, I believe, and talk a bit more about our general positioning, strategy, and path forward. And basically, the starting point of all this is a clear mission that drives us, and this is to empower the simplification of progress in bio-processing and through this to enable the manufacturing of new and better pharmaceuticals and to help medications to become more affordable going forward. Now, a key success factor for quite a number of years in helping us to execute on this mission successfully is our positioning as a solution provider.
And that means our ambition is to help our customers along the entire process chain in manufacturing biopharmaceuticals. And that starts off from cell culture media preparation, as you can see here in this chart on the top left side, through the fermentation process, cell harvesting, and then through purification and filtration as well. So, and as we are very much driven by innovation and offering customers not just a broad portfolio, but also a very innovative portfolio, we are investing quite significantly, constantly in developing new technologies based on the segments that we are covering. But another very important aspect and pillar here is that we are continuously adding technologies through complementary acquisitions. And as you can see here along the timeline, there have been quite a number of those. You can see the two that I was elaborating on before on the right side for 2019 and 2020.
We also can see that, for example, the acquisition of Umetrics, just to name the one that we made before, of course, is a very differentiating, innovative addition that makes our overall offering even more relevant to our customers. Based on the execution of this very focused strategy, we have built a strong positioning in a very attractive, fast-growing market. What are the drivers for growth in this market? There are basically three to be mentioned here. The first one are demographics. We still see a growing global population, but maybe even more importantly than that, we have to see that elderly people, and there's a strong correlation between the need for medicines and age. Elderly people will triple by number until the year 2050. The second one relates to pretty much the broadening of the market, and that is very much about the rise of biosimilars.
30% of compound annual growth rate we expect here for the next couple of years in this market that pretty much didn't play much of a role five years ago, for instance, and the third driver, you could say, is pretty much one that drives this market forward, and that is about innovation. We see a strong R&D pipeline overall at our customers, very much now and increasingly also in advanced therapies like gene and cell therapy, and 40% of the pharmaceutical R&D pipeline are biologics in these days, and all this together should lead to around 8% of compound annual growth for the biopharmaceutical market in the next five, six years. Let me briefly highlight a few different dimensions and areas of innovation that makes the biopharmaceutical market and industry such a dynamic and dynamically innovating field in these days.
The first one is pretty much about acceleration of drug development. Today, we are talking about 12 years average time that it takes to bring a new drug to the market. It costs by far more than EUR 1 billion on average now. So, and that obviously is a situation where a lot of improvement should be possible and would be very relevant and important. The second one is efficiency. We clearly see a need to better control and reduce the cost of a number of therapies. So, we need to find ways to increase the efficiency of the production of also classical monoclonal antibodies, for example, biopharmaceuticals and biosimilars. And then thirdly, we need new tools to really realize the potential of advanced therapies as novel cell and gene therapies, as mentioned before.
And when we bring this all together, one can say that there is a need for automation, digitalization, you could also say, intensification for sure, acceleration of process development to really change the future drug manufacturing and make it more powerful than it is today. There's another aspect that needs to be mentioned when shaping our strategic direction going forward, and that is the geographical perspective. And here, clearly, China needs to be highlighted and mentioned. The Chinese market is gaining importance very rapidly. You see on the left-hand side at the bottom the comparison of the growth rate that is expected for the Chinese market in comparison to the American one and the European one. The key drivers here are the sheer size of the population in China, as well as a growing individual demand on average.
This partially has to do also with the average age of the Chinese population. I talked about that a minute before, and then, of course, also a certain shift from traditional medicines to innovative biopharmaceutical-based medicines that one can also see in China. Now, we feel very well positioned giving our footprint in China. You see that on the map on the right-hand side of this chart. We do have for long years now a very significant footprint, both regarding our market presence, but also regarding our manufacturing footprint. However, for sure, we will remain investing into this and expand this footprint going forward. Now, pretty much based on our strong positioning and the dynamics of the market that I wanted to highlight with the charts before a little bit, we have defined our strategic targets and initiatives for 2025.
On the right side, you find the financial targets that we have set, and these are EUR 2.8 billion of sales revenues for 2025 and an EBITDA margin of 30%. Now, one could say, well, 30% EBITDA margin, that's the level that you have achieved already. That's right. And again, here, it plays a role that going forward, we also expect that besides significant organic growth, we will continue to see some non-organic growth, and that this non-organic growth, more likely than not, will always dilute a little bit the profitability for a certain time because it's increasingly difficult, of course, as you can imagine, as our profitability has risen to find targets that already operate just on the same profitability level as we do at the point in time of the acquisition. We also have defined three main buckets of strategic initiatives. The first one is a regional one.
I talked about the importance of the Chinese market, but we shouldn't forget the importance of the U.S. market. We are fully committed and have a clear roadmap to further invest into our footprint and presence in the U.S. market and to continue gaining market share in this very important market. The second one is about innovation and continuing to expand our portfolio. That has to do partially with digital tools. I highlighted the acquisition of Umetrics before. It has to do with the enhancement of our process development capabilities. I touched upon that topic briefly, how important that is. And then thirdly, of course, the expansion into adjacent applications as advanced therapies, for example, could be one of those.
In regards to operations, after a number of years in which we invested a lot into the expansion of our manufacturing footprint, now we are focusing more in improving and further increasing the productivity of our operations by accelerating the workflows, introducing meaningful digital tools, etc., but we also will, as mentioned before, continue to invest into our manufacturing base in Asia. Now, I would like to switch the perspective a bit before I wrap all this up, and that is that I would like to talk and draw your attention to our commitment towards sustainability, and what is very important for me to highlight is that the core of our business that we are focusing on every day with all what we do is a very sustainable goal by itself, and that is better health for more people, as I talked about.
However, we nevertheless are committed to invest and to work on three initiatives, mainly to improve our performance here even more, and that is product stewardship. What is meant by this? This is very much that even though the single-use products that we offer to the market already have contributed significantly to the reduction of, for instance, the water and energy consumption along the manufacturing of biopharmaceuticals in comparison to classical stainless steel-based technologies, however, we are now investing into optimizing the usage, the disposal, and the recycling of polymers, and we are doing so by contributing to the European Plastic Pact and being part of that. We are the first company in our industry who has become part of this Plastic Pact in Europe. The second one, for sure, is the climate strategy. I think this goes pretty much without saying how important that is.
From the next year onwards, we will be able to reduce our CO2 footprint by around 30% through the use of hydroelectric power vastly here in Europe, and the third one is that we are also looking beyond the sphere that we can influence very directly, so that means that we are taking care of the and increase sustainability of our supply chains, and we are working here in a network with very competent and dedicated partners to assess our supply sustainability performance and to improve that. A second topic is our branding. You might already have recognized that our charts that we are showing here to you today look a bit different than before, so, well, actually, four months ago, towards the end of February, we were introducing our new brand that, to some extent, has to do with the visual appearance and corporate colors.
We also unified the logo that we are using as Sartorius Stedim Biotech with the one that our majority shareholder and parent company, Sartorius, is using. But more importantly than that, this also reflects the strategic positioning and ambition of the group, and that means that our brand promise sums really very nicely up the claim that we are having and working for, and that is simplifying progress, and that is, we believe, highly relevant in light of the trends and needs in our industries, as I showed to you a minute before, so ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to conclude and summarize. I think it's fair to say that we, again, have set ourselves an ambitious agenda and that we also have a positive outlook for 2020 and beyond. We plan significant growth for 2020, even though we clearly see the uncertainties related to COVID-19.
We are strongly focusing on the remote integration of the acquired businesses and making very good progress here. We are on track, indeed, to meet targets that we have set not less than eight years ago already, both in financial respect, but also regarding our strategic positioning and all other dimensions. And we are happy to be able to continue on further job creation, as well as expanding our research activities and our manufacturing footprint. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for your attention on this presentation. I now will get along the specific formal topics of the agenda of the ordinary shareholder meeting, starting with topics one and two. And topic one, as said before, relates to the three reports of the board of directors. And you find these respective reports as follows, so that I don't read them out today.
First is the management report of the Board of Directors and the group company management report, which are disclosed in pages 18-58 of the 2019 Universal Registration Document. The second one is the Board of Directors' report on resolutions submitted to the ordinary shareholder meeting, which is disclosed in its entirety on pages 193-196 of the 2019 Universal Registration Document, and then the corporate governance report, which was drafted to comply with Article L. 225-37 of the French Commercial Code, and which is published on pages 60-93 of the 2019 Universal Registration Document.
Now, topic two on our agenda covers the three reports of the statutory auditors, which are respectively the report on the financial statements for the year ended 31st December 2019, the report on the consolidated financial statements for the year, again, ended 31st December 2019, and the report on the regulated agreements covered by Article L. 225-38 and subsequent of the French commercial code, and I now want to invite Mr. John Evans, our auditor, to read and comment these three reports. John, please.
Good morning, so this is John Evans from KPMG, representing the statutory auditors from Deloitte and KPMG, so for the first report, I'll present a summary of our audit report on the SSB 2019 consolidated financial statements.
In our opinion, the consolidated financial statements give a true and fair view of the assets and liabilities and the financial position of the group as of 31st December 2019 and of the results of its operations for the year that ended in accordance with international financial reporting standards as adopted by the European Union. Concerning the key audit matter relating to the value of goodwill in the financial statements, we've been able to conclude that this is correctly valued in the financial statements. Concerning specific verifications, we also performed in accordance with professional standards applicable in France, the specific verifications required by law and regulations of the information given in the group management report of the board of directors, and we have no specific matters to report.
Concerning our audit report on the SSB 2019 parent company financial statements, we concluded that, in our opinion, the financial statements give a true and fair view of the assets and liabilities and of the financial position of the company as at the end of December 2019 and of the results of its operations for the year that ended in accordance with French accounting principles. We also issued a special report on related party transactions for the year ended December 2019. Firstly, we were not advised of agreements authorized and concluded during the previous accounting period to be submitted to the general shareholder meeting for approval. Secondly, we informed you that one agreement relating to the recharge of administrative services by Sartorius AG to SSB was not subject to prior authorization by the board of directors.
Thirdly, some agreements were not approved by the general meeting of shareholders of the previous year. These relate to the recharge of general and administrative services and to regulated commitments concerning the company president. Finally, we confirmed that the company has provided appropriate information concerning the company's situation, the group's situation with regard to the COVID-19 crisis. That concludes the auditor's presentation. Thank you for your attention.
Mr. Evans, thank you very much for your report. Ladies and gentlemen, I will now go through the resolutions corresponding to topics 3 to 12 and will present their respective voting results. If you allow myself, I will not read them out as they were already presented and detailed when introducing the agenda of the meeting earlier. The first resolution was accepted with a voting result of 99.91%.
The second resolution was accepted with a voting result of 99.99%, and the third resolution was accepted with a voting result of 100%. The fourth resolution was rejected with a voting result of 14.54%. The fifth resolution was accepted with a voting result of 99.99%. The sixth resolution was accepted with a voting result of 93.52%. The seventh resolution was accepted with a voting result of 92.79%. The eighth resolution was accepted with a voting result of 92.37%. The ninth resolution was accepted with a voting result of 94.47%, and the tenth resolution was accepted with a voting result of 100%. We will now go on with the extraordinary shareholder meeting, starting with topic 13 of the agenda, and this is reading of the report of the board of directors on the proposed resolutions.
The board of directors' report on resolutions submitted to the extraordinary shareholders' meeting is disclosed in its entirety on pages 196 to 208 of the 2019 Universal Registration Document. I will therefore not read it out today. I will now go through the resolutions corresponding to topics 14 to 16 and will present their respective voting results. Here again, I will not read them out. Resolutions 11 to 19 covered several delegations of authority granted to the board of directors in order to act on the share securities and the share capital of the company. The financial instrument covered by each of them was detailed when introducing the agenda of the meeting earlier. So the 11th resolution was accepted with a voting result of 94.26%. The 12th resolution was accepted with a voting result of 92.01%. The 13th resolution was accepted with a voting result of 92.23%.
The 14th resolution was accepted with a voting result of 93.34%. The 15th resolution was accepted with a voting result of 93.62%, and the 16th resolution was accepted with a voting result of 95.10%. The 17th resolution was accepted with a voting result of 93.68%. The 18th resolution then was accepted with a voting result of 99.30%, and the 19th resolution was accepted with a voting result of 94.00%. The 20th resolution was accepted with a voting result of 99.96%, and the final and 21st resolution was accepted with a voting result of 100%. Ladies and gentlemen, as no questions were raised by shareholders ahead of the ASM, I now have to close the general meeting insofar as we reached the end of the 2020 annual combined shareholders' meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech SA. I declare the 2020 annual combined shareholders' meeting of Sartorius Stedim Biotech SA closed.
Thank you all very much for following this live on the internet.