Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. I bring the annual general meeting of Sanofi to order, a meeting which I'm honored to chair. After two years during which the world was faced with an unprecedented health crisis, which forced us to hold our annual general meeting virtually without your physical presence, we are immensely pleased to welcome you once again in person and to discuss with you. I would like to thank all the shareholders who have cast their votes remotely before the meeting and all those who are currently following the live stream of the meeting. The recording will remain accessible on the Internet after the broadcast. By my side, I have Paul Hudson, CEO, Jean-Baptiste Chasseloup de Chatillon, CFO, and Philippe Peyre, General Secretary.
We also have with us, they are going to speak from the lectern, Patrick Kron, Chairman of the Remunerations Committee, John Reed, EVP for R&D, and Sandrine Bouttier-Streff, Head of CSR. We are now going to appoint the Bureau of the meeting. I suggest that we name Philippe Peyre Secretary of the meeting. I also ask that the company L'Oréal, represented by Mr. Yannick Chalmé, and the company Amundi Asset Management, represented by Mr. Olivier Desnos, to please act as tellers, a function that they have accepted. The statutory auditors are also attending the meeting. Mr. Alexis Hurtrel of the firm Ernst & Young is representing the College of Auditors. Mr. Raynald Parker, an officer of the law, is also attending the meeting. This meeting is recorded and live-streamed on the company's website. The recording will remain available on the Internet after broadcast. Philippe?
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. The shareholders have signed the attendance sheet at the entrance, both in their own name or for the people who gave them mandate. Based on this attendance sheet, shareholders present or represented gather over a quarter of shares with voting rights. Indeed, together, they own 873,516,140 shares, or 69.95% of shares with voting rights. Consequently, although the quorum is not yet final, it already emerges from the attendance sheet that the meeting is regularly convened and can validly decide. On the desk, we have the articles of association of the firm, a copy of the convening letter sent to registered shareholders, copies and acknowledgments of registered letters with acknowledgment sent to the statutory auditors, a copy of the ballot dated 25th March 2022 with the notice of meeting,
a copy of the of the Libertés Affiche and the Dallo Journals dated 11th April 2022 containing the convening notice, reports from the statutory auditors, the attendance sheet of the meeting, proxies for representative shareholders, as well as all the documents prescribed by the law which were made available to shareholders at their head office within the legal timeframes and sent to those who requested them. The agenda is on page eight of the convening notice. Detailed explanations on resolutions are given in the Board of Directors' report which is available on our website and on pages nine and following of the convening brochure. No draft resolution or item in the agenda were filed by shareholders. And last, you received either from BNP Paribas or from your financial intermediary all the legally required documents related to this meeting.
Dear shareholders. As I said, I am extremely happy to be able to welcome you in person once again for our annual general meeting. Much change in the last two years, and especially since the beginning of last year. Change in our geostrategic environment first. Who would have thought a few months ago that there would be war in Europe again? Who would have thought that the rise of populism, the rise of nationalism would lead to a further deepening of divides between states and within states as well?
Who would have thought that a global pandemic would have a direct impact, such a major one, on our societies, our lifestyles, and would further strengthen populism and nationalism? Who would have thought that after a long period of low interest rates, that inflation would re-emerge and that interest rate hikes would happen even though major signs of the economy slowing down are appearing? Your company was able and still can, despite these headwinds, make progress because on the one hand, the pharmaceutical industry is meeting growing needs in all countries, whatever the political regime or whatever the geography. The health needs of men and women know no borders, and it is our responsibility to see to them as much as possible.
That's precisely the reason why we have not stopped providing essential products for life in Russia, as we did in the past in other countries like Iran, whilst canceling all our promotional activities, of course, and whilst also bringing, of course, significant aid to Ukraine, both in terms of funding and important donations of drugs. Of course, this aid is not over. Your group is also in motion because since 2019, under Paul Hudson's leadership, although it was based on solid foundations, it needed new impetus around a clear strategy supported by the board of directors. 2021 was thus a year of progress for Sanofi. First, because business activity grew significantly by 7.1% at constant foreign exchange, and all businesses contributed to this growth.
In specialty care, the most remarkable item was the growth of Dupixent, a product stemming from collaboration between Regeneron, which enjoyed impressive growth around several pathologies, atopic dermatitis, asthma, and eosinophilic esophagitis. Several therapeutic trials confirmed and extended indications in these three areas, and this product has grown by 52% last year. Last March, we announced that we anticipated sales of this product to reach the exceptional figure of EUR 13 billion. Other therapeutic areas are, by the way, covered by clinical trials. Dupixent, complemented by several initiatives, will put the group quickly at the top spot in the world in the area of immunology. The vaccine business also grew strongly, plus 6.1% in spite of the COVID-19 pandemic impact on the sales of flu vaccines. Meanwhile, our COVID vaccine based on recombinant proteins.
Last March, we published the phase III results, and the request, the marketing request is being assessed. The general medicine division improved its performance, and as you know, it aims to come back to growth to contribute actively to the group's development. Lastly, the consumer healthcare business, after several years of negative growth, is, thanks to new management and a better-suited organization for this job, has come back to positive figures more quickly than what we expected. Business growth, increase in gross margin, good cost control, thus helped significantly improve our profitability, which now reaches 28.4%, and net earnings per share growing by 15.5%. Beyond the business activity and the figures, your group carried out a sustained investment policy, both in terms of industrial investment and in terms of new acquisitions to strengthen the group's scientific platforms or some of our businesses.
EUR 6.4 billion were therefore invested to acquire Origimm, Kadmon, Translate Bio, Tidal Therapeutics, Kymab. Focus, simplification, digitalization are helping the group focus now on the major challenges for its future. By focusing efforts on essential assets, in particular in the general medicine and consumer healthcare businesses, the group, without a doubt, became more efficient and has improved its growth potential. 2021 was also a major year for our industrial business with the preparation of the IPO of EUROAPI, which will be explained in more detail. The aim of this operation is not only to make our own business more agile, but also, and above all maybe, to allow a great industrial company to become autonomous whilst it was already working 50% of its business for third parties to find new momentum thanks to the conquest of new clients, which very often are Sanofi competitors.
This operation will also help build an independent company for the production of APIs, therefore rooting it sustainably in Europe for a strategically important business. Focus is, of course, crucial in what is essential in our business R&D. There can be no future for a company like ours without a strong ability to provide new scientific and medical answers to patient unmet needs. The group's new identity highlights it, chasing the miracles of science. In this area as well, 2021 was a year of progress. First of all, our R&D CapEx grew and reaches EUR 5.7 billion. The pipeline improved significantly with the first-in-human trials of 10 new compounds. Several results obtained during the first quarter of the year will be presented in detail. Among the highlights. We should mention the specific effort to be present in mRNA.
The acquisition of Translate Bio, our partner since 2018, the creation of a 450-strong team should allow us to have an effective platform, both in vaccines and in the development of the specialty business. Lastly, in the area of innovation, I would like to highlight that your company has invested to endow its R&D with the most innovative instruments around digital resources, with the use of big data and artificial intelligence. It is with this outlook that we've signed several agreements, especially with Owkin and Exscientia. Strengthening our pipeline in various stages of development is a centrally important issue for Sanofi. At the same time, Sanofi has committed to several structural initiatives in France.
I'll remind you, although it is a major investment, there is the startup of the vaccine plant, an open-ended plant, a EUR 450 million investment in the Lyon area. Beyond that, Sanofi is working side by side with Institut Gustave Roussy and the Plateau de Saclay Universities to create a major French research center against cancer. With Orange, Capgemini, and Generali, we've opened a digital health incubator called Future4Care, which already hosts 25 startups. The year 2021 also helped us develop our commitment policy within and for society beyond our main business, which naturally improves life. It is based on four pillars, the environment, of course, with the acceleration of our greenhouse gas emission reduction goal.
Access to drugs, both via a unit destined to promote access to 30 essential drugs or donations of doses for rare diseases, the eradication of some pathologies like polio or sleeping sickness, and other commitments as well, which will be presented later by Sandrine Bouttier-Stref. Thus, as you can see, your group is in motion, a motion which is accelerated and which is now being recognized by the market. For that, before we talk further about governance and its changes, I would like to thank on my own behalf and that of my colleagues of the board, Paul Hudson, our CEO, the members of the Executive Committee, and all 100,000 workers of the group. Regarding changes in governance, a few changes indeed.
First of all, now your group has 13 directors, but we've decided to submit to your approval a few strengthenings of this board. As you know, every year the board is subject to an assessment. Last year we had an external assessment, so we are submitting to your vote the appointment of three new directors. Carole Ferrand, who is a finance CFO of the Capgemini company, Émile Voest, who is a Dutch scientist, and lastly, Antoine Yver, who is French, American, and Swiss. I don't know whether in the statistics he counts as three nationalities. I don't know which one was selected, but as you'll see, we have a group where non-French directors are widely represented. He's also a scientist, and the last two directors will join the Scientific committee, which needed to be strengthened because, as I said earlier, R&D is crucial for the group's future.
Carole Ferrand will join the Audit committee, which is made up, as you know, of independent directors in its majority. I will now present our three applicants.
Good afternoon. My name is Carole Ferrand. I'm CFO of the Capgemini firm. I have a diploma from HEC. I started my career in auditing and financial consulting at PricewaterhouseCoopers. This first experience was the start of a professional career devoted to corporate finance within various companies and various sectors and industries. I spent 10 years at Sony France as CFO, then as general secretary, before joining EuropaCorp, a French audiovisual company, as CFO. I also had an opportunity to be the Head of financing of the Altemis Group , a holding company which is the controlling shareholder of the luxury company, Kering.
During this period, I also served as director on various companies, including one term on the board of directors of Capgemini. After two years on the board of Capgemini, in 2018, I became CFO of this group. This group now has 325,000 employees worldwide. Capgemini is one of the global leaders in strategic consulting and a reference partner for main companies for the whole of their digital transformation. In this respect, I'm also supervising the Risk committee for the group and all of the real estate and purchasing operations. My whole career was devoted to supporting development and investment strategies for companies. Health companies like Sanofi are facing multiple changes, scientific, societal, but also digital, an area which I'm acquainted with thanks to my experience at Capgemini.
By joining the board of Sanofi, my ambition is to harness my wide and varied experience in financial but also operational and strategic for your beautiful company and its purpose to improve people's lives. I would be happy and deeply honored to contribute to this mission by being fully committed as a director. Thank you.
Good afternoon. My name is Antoine Yver. I've now been for a year the head of development of Centessa Pharmaceuticals Inc. With an innovative portfolio that goes beyond mere oncology. I was a former intern at the Hôpitaux de Paris, and a head of clinic. I have a diploma in medicine and pediatrics of Paris-Saclay, and I also have an MD in immunology. In 1990, I decided to join this pharmaceutical business to progress research and development in anticancer treatment.
After a few years at Rhône-Poulenc Rorer, I joined Aventis in 1999 as a global head of development of clinical development for oncology. I was the head of the development of Taxotere before I went to Johnson & Johnson in 2005. Between 2009 and 2016, I led the oncology global development of AstraZeneca, and I could contribute with my team to the availability of Tagrisso and Lynparza, two widely used therapies against lung cancer, respectively, and forms of ovarian, breast, prostate, and pancreas cancer. Based on this experience, I joined Daiichi Sankyo to be the global leader of R&D for oncology, which allowed me to contribute to the availability of Enhertu, a widely used drug for certain forms of breast and stomach cancer.
As you can see, my whole career was focused around research and development for new, highly innovative drugs against cancer, an area that I'm excited about. After spending 15 years at Rhône-Poulenc and Aventis in France, U.K., and the U.S.A., I would be honored to join your board of directors and harness my experience in the development and oncology, to serve the long-term ambitions for Sanofi. Thank you.
Bonjour. My name is Émile Voest. I'm a professor of medical oncology at the Netherlands Cancer Institute and the University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands. I'm currently the director of Cancer Core Europe, a collaboration of seven top comprehensive cancer centers in Europe, and until 2021, I was the executive medical director of the Netherlands Cancer Institute. I've also been very much engaged over the past years in key medical societies, such as the European Society for Medical Oncology, ESMO, and the American Society of Clinical Oncology, ASCO. As you can hear, my career has been dedicated to one goal, advancing science and treatment to improve the lives of people with cancer. While massive progress has been made to treat and prevent cancer over the past decades, the burden of the disease on our modern societies remains staggering.
Especially in oncology, there is a huge unmet need to develop novel methods to find, test, and approve drugs. Throughout my career, I was very fortunate to found and lead several initiatives related to advancing precision medicine in cancer, including developing innovative trials and reimbursement models, and build bridges between healthcare providers, regulatory authorities, and pharma. Building on a strong legacy, I believe Sanofi has everything it takes to reemerge as a strong leader in oncology in the future and improve the lives of millions of people with cancer across the world. I would be delighted to actively support Sanofi's strategy in my new role of independent director. Merci beaucoup. Thank you very much.
Thank you. Our three new directors are here to introduce themselves. Please. Thank you. Well, one specificity, the terms of these three new directors will be for three years and not four as usual, in order to avoid us having too many reappointments in the same year. Very soon, you'll have to decide on the reappointment of four terms. If we had three new terms, then we would need to reappoint seven directors out of 14, and leaving aside directors representing employees, and it's not good policy to have such a number of reappointments on a given year. We decided to stagger reappointments. We're also submitting to your approval the reappointments of four directors, and not the least. The first of them is our CEO, Paul Hudson.
I think that one might say that Paul Hudson reasonably delivered on his commitments as a director, and especially as CEO of the company. For us, of course, it is obvious that he should be reappointed. Christophe Babule, who is the CFO of L'Oréal, who's been very active on the Board and the Audit Committee. Patrick Kron, who later on will present the proposals made by the Remunerations Committee to the Board, and who was followed. Lastly, Gilles Schnepp, an Independent Director, Chairman of Legrand. I'm sorry. It's a bit of a remembrance. He's the Chairman of Danone. We met a long time ago when Gilles was working at Legrand. He's a Chairman CEO of Danone, and he's leading the Nominations committee, and that was in December.
I had reached the 12-year limit, which challenged my independence, and so he is in charge of preparing with members of the Appointments committee and the whole board, preparing my succession because my term will end at the next general meeting. The board, which is presented to you now, after this general meeting, will move to 16 directors from 15, including two representing employees. It is widely independent, highly international. It has good representation of gender diversity. This is a board which associates very wide and diverse experience and skills. That way we can have high-quality discussions around management, strategy, and also follow-up on execution. We can have deep dives on a number of group activities, especially via the committees. Quite naturally, the work that we do is to constantly improve the quality of the board.
That's why along the years, you saw systematic renewal of board members. In this respect, I would like to thank two directors who've left us. One, Melanie Lee, was a member of the Scientific committee, and the other one, Carole Piwnica, who had been on the board for 11 years, and who would reach the 12-year limit and who would lose her independence. Carole Piwnica had very positive contribution for the group over the years via all the ups and downs that the company went through. We could always rely on her to provide an independent perspective, very insightful, especially based on her experience as an investor in biotech. We now have a board which works relatively well. We had 10 meetings in 2021 with an attendance rate that was very high, close to 100%.
100% for committees, 98% for the board. At a time when which was fairly difficult in terms of travel for part of the year, of course, we widely used teleconferencing, but the interest and commitment of directors for the company is very dense. They really want to contribute unreservedly, and you can see that in the attendance figures. Of course, in the past year, we looked at some topics systematically, like the implementation of the Play to Win strategy. Of course, we carefully followed evolutions in the COVID vaccine development. We also looked at, and this is something that we'll discuss again and again, we looked at our Chinese strategy, the EUROAPI project that I talked about earlier, the actual launch of the CSR strategy, which accelerated very strongly in 2021. I will come back to that later.
Of course, the examination of acquisition projects and the discussion of strategic projects. As you know, we have five specialized committees. The first one is the Audit Committee, chaired by Fabienne Lecorvaisier, who was very busy with six meetings in 2021, and systematic work to review the quarterly accounts, but also to review risks, cybersecurity, various follow-up, in particular, internal audits, what we call supply chain, so the industrial supplies for the group, and also the application of new regulations on data protection. The Remunerations Committee chaired by Patrick Kron, I won't come back over what it does, because in a minute, Patrick Kron will present the various decisions that it had to examine. The Appointments, Governance and CSR Committee, now chaired by Gilles Schnepp. It met five times in 2021.
The major topics for this committee are succession matters. Both for the CEO and for the Executive committee, of course, the succession of the chairman, which is a topic that the committee has started working on. As regards CSR, after the implementation of the CSR strategy defined by management in connection with the board, systematically now at every meeting of the nominations, governance, and CSR committee, there is an in-depth review of one of the CSR pillars. The Strategic committee, which I chair, met five times in 2021, and it looked more specifically at some key issues like acquisition projects or the change in performance and monitoring of strategy, and also an update on the more specific situation in China. Last but not least, the Scientific committee chaired by Thomas Südhof, that only had two members last year.
It will now have three independent members, and it regularly has deep dives on specific areas, vaccines, oncology, specialty care, immunology, with a very high level of discussions and a very fruitful dialogue with the R&D team, not just the head of R&D, John Reed, but also in detail with the team to further deepen its review of opportunities or development stages of products. We also had two strategic seminars in 2021, and that is regularly the case every year, where we reviewed the various aspects that I mentioned earlier. One word on developments in the share price. You can see that on this slide, the share price change since the third of January. We could have shown figures since the first of January or the second of January 2021.
Sanofi's growth would have been even higher, but I think that the recent period is more interesting. You can see quite a significant gap between Sanofi's performance on the one hand, the performance of US pharma and European pharma on the other hand, and the French index performance. What I said earlier, the fact that Sanofi was able to de-correlate from the market and has its own dynamics, is now being recognized by the market. If you compare the company, you know that this is one of the criteria that determines the award of performance shares. Performance over the period, it's a short one, but it's noteworthy nonetheless. Sanofi is now trending above the median for its peers. These are the same peers that we use as a benchmark to appreciate total shareholder return, which determines 20% of the long-term remuneration for our CEO.
If you look at the dividend, we are proposing an increase in the dividend, raising it to 3.33 EUR. In addition to this dividend, we have a distribution of some EUROAPI shares. For 23 Sanofi shares, each shareholder will be entitled to 1 EUROAPI share. We chose that path, which was not the one that we initially had in mind, because given the market instability, the IPO of EUROAPI could be problematic, and we absolutely wanted to carry out the IPO to give the company its freedom as quickly as possible. This is the path that we thought was the most appropriate to quickly get what we wanted. This distribution is happening as an additional dividend. Last but not least, regarding the share ownership structure, very little change between last year and now.
Roughly, the main volumes are roughly the same. Last thing that I wanted to note, an increase in employee share ownership. You know that this is a policy that we carry out regularly. We are close to 2% employee share ownership. Over the years, we shall continue with this policy to further involve employees in the success of the actions led by the company, which is reflected or should be logically reflected on the share price. This is what I wanted to tell you as regards governance. Now I will give the floor to Patrick Kron for a presentation of the remuneration policy.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. Once again, like previous years, I am going to report on the activity of the Remuneration Committee, which I'm honored to chair.
More specifically, I will discuss aspects related to the remuneration of corporate officers, as explained in the corporate governance part of the universal registration document, chapter two, as was mentioned by Mr. Weinberg a minute ago. I remind you that the Remuneration Committee is only made up of independent directors. The first aspect on this slide before you is about the remuneration policy for directors. There was a change in 2021, after which directors who participate to participate to meetings with video conferencing will receive the same remuneration to that of a director residing in France. Before that, they would only receive half of the remuneration, and this will be the same system in 2022. The sitting fees paid in 2021 accounted for EUR 1.6 million for an authorized budget from the general meeting of EUR 2 million.
Out of this remuneration, three-quarters are for variable remuneration directly related to actual participation to meetings in line with the AFEP-MEDEF code recommendations, which recommends that at least half of their remuneration should be variable. On the next slides, you can see the remuneration policy that applies to the chairman, which is made up of fixed pay, which was EUR 800,000 in 2021, and this is going to be the same level in 2022. In-kind benefits with a company car. On the next slide, you can see the various components of the CEO's remuneration, which is made up of fixed pay, annual variable pay, assessed based on the achievement of predefined goals and mostly quantitative goals, as well as remuneration as performance shares, the acquisition of which is related to presence, conditions, and multi-year performance conditions.
I would also remind you, as you can see here, that there are specific provisions that apply to the CEO after his term, severance pay in case of a departure at the company's request, an additional pension scheme with defined contributions, where the contribution every year is related to performance conditions, and the possibility of having a non-compete clause. Since the slides are moving a bit faster than my presentation, I deduce that I should be faster. That is what I'm going to do. Regarding 2021 pay, what is proposed is a fixed remuneration that you can see here, variable pay with details that will be explained in a minute, and also performance shares, which were 75,000 shares for the fiscal year 2021. You also know that Mr.
Hudson benefited from a welcome package in two tranches to partially offset the loss of remuneration that he had to incur when he left his previous job. Regarding variable pay for 2021 for Mr. Hudson, 50% was related to financial criteria. You can see the split. The achievement rate was overall 114% within a bracket ranging between 0% and 167%. The second half of criteria that are used to determine variable pay were related to individual criteria. Most of them were quantitative. The achievement rate was estimated by the board based on a proposal by the committee to be 122.8%, still within that same range, 0%-167. Overall, the achievement rate is 118.4%.
It was 113.5 for the previous fiscal year. If you apply that 118.4% rate to the target variable pay, which was 150% of fixed, you get the amount that was shown on the previous slide of EUR 2.308 million. Next slide. For 2022, the board has decided to raise Mr. Hudson's fixed pay to EUR 1.4 million to keep the same variable pay structure with half financial goals, sales growth, business net income, business operating margin, Free Cash Flow, growth of new assets, and half for specific goals, according to the same split as this year, and as you can see on this slide. Moreover, the board would like to grant 82,500 shares.
That's a 10% increase compared to the previous award, entirely subject to internal and external criteria. To come to these proposals, the board. First the committee, then the board relied on detailed analyses of practices implemented in a basket of comparable European and American firms. It results that despite these upward adjustments, both for remuneration, monetary remuneration and share remuneration, Mr. Hudson's pay would remain within the first quartile of the sample, the lowest quarter of the payment scale for the 13 CEOs of the pharmaceutical CEO companies that we use to define this pay. Let me remind you as well that this basket of comparable companies is also used to compare, as Mr. Weinberg showed earlier, the performance of Sanofi relative to the other companies.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, these are the items that I had to introduce to shed light on your vote for the draft resolutions 11-16 that you'll have an opportunity to decide on during this general meeting. Thank you.
Thank you, Patrick. I will now give the floor to Paul Hudson, who is going to present changes in the group over the past year and also for the beginning of this current fiscal year.
We are proud of our history, but changes in logo, Sanofi, and so we are proud to be united behind a strong graphic identity with new energy in our constant quest for solutions for our patients. We have given ourselves the wherewithal for our ambition by deriving the right conclusions. Brave, curious, we own our objective with new ambition. When we ask what Sanofi is doing, we can say with a single voice, "We are chasing the miracles of science to improve people's lives.
Bonjour à toutes et à tous. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm delighted to be with you today on this third annual general meeting as CEO in the second year of the pandemic. At long last, we can be together again. I look forward to exchanging with you and taking your questions. As you can see on the screen, Sanofi has taken on a new identity this year. We have a new logo, we have a new purpose and a new brand. Some of you may have noticed that this logo does look like the very first one was created back in 1973. With this new identity, we've decided to pay tribute to our past while turning to the future.
Sanofi will be 50 years old next year. It's pretty young, but it's still the beginning of a beautiful story. It started off with a small company that became a world leader in the health industry with a strong scientific and industrial base in France. Since 2019, and with our new Play to Win strategy, we've started a new chapter in the history of Sanofi. We want to write this chapter by presenting a new purpose. We chase the miracles of science to improve people's lives. Our pipeline is made up of great targets. As we've been investing, we can see the fruit of that investment and that commitment.
I am satisfied that the past two years were a turning point for the company, but that was the result of the hard work of all our teams. You can be proud of the commitment of Sanofi's employees to work for the company and especially in France. Now I would like to turn to English. Well, today is my first real annual general meeting with you all. 2022 already marks the third year of the execution of our Play to Win strategy. Since December 2019, quarter- after- quarter, our teams have relentlessly delivered strong proof points of execution. Our strategic priorities allowed us to make important, clear, and decisive choices, and our strategy has remained exactly the same. This consistency in an industry like ours, driven by long-term innovation cycles, is absolutely essential. I'm truly impressed by the progress we're making.
I'm proud of the fact that we are slightly ahead of our plan, despite the complexities created by the pandemic. As we communicated last week during our quarter one results, we are on a clear trajectory to deliver on our midterm financial targets.
I truly believe 2022 could mark an inflection point for Sanofi and allow us to open a new phase in 2023, which will be characterized by the launch of potentially transformative medicines and vaccines for people right across the world. Our modernization agenda is going full speed ahead, and as you can see on the slide, we are making great strides to make Sanofi a more agile and a more focused company. We announced six bolt-on acquisitions to strengthen our growth areas in immunology, oncology, and vaccines. Those acquisitions provide Sanofi R&D team with the best toolbox of technology and technological platforms for breaking new ground and advancing science. In addition, we also move forward with groundbreaking collaborations to unleash the power of data and artificial intelligence in research and development.
At the same time, and because we know the importance of making choices, we have taken concrete action throughout 2021 to reduce our complexity, again, fully in line with our 2019 commitments. We've continued to divest brands from our established portfolio and moved more than 50 countries to a distributor model. The carve-in model for our consumer healthcare GBU is now about 80% complete, and we started an ambitious program to reduce our number of brands with the objective to increase our focus on what we call the love brands. As we take action to modernize and transform the company, we also stay focused on advancing the three growth drivers we identified as part of our long-term strategy. Let's focus on them for a second. First, Dupixent.
The potential for this unique once in a career medicine is truly impressive, and we always feel like we're only scratching the surface of what it can do for patients. Two years ago, we shared our ambition to achieve more than EUR 10 billion in peak sales, which was more than EUR 3 billion ahead of market consensus. I remember at the time, many investors remained cautious about their belief in this target. A month ago, we upgraded the peak sales objective to EUR 13 billion to reflect our even stronger confidence in the unparalleled safety and efficacy profile of this exceptional medicine. With 11 potential regulatory approvals by 2025 for this medicine alone, we believe that the EUR 13 billion peak sales target we communicated may only be a waypoint on the incredible journey of Dupixent. Second, our vaccine business.
Well, all of us have seen the incredible power of immunization over the past two years. The rapid acceleration of mRNA as a promising technology for vaccines, combined with the emergence of new competitors during this period, has inspired us to transform our business by earning our leadership in vaccines every day. To do so, we're looking to the future and opening a new chapter of our story, which will lead us to double our sales by the end of the decade. Let me also share a few words on our efforts in the fight against COVID-19. Our response to the crisis has always been driven by one goal, do the right thing. That is why we made the decision in 2021 to leverage our worldwide manufacturing capacity and expertise for supplying 500 million doses of the three currently approved vaccines.
Our teams also never stopped advancing the science with our own recombinant vaccine. In February, we had an important moment for our scientific credibility with the publication of data which show that our vaccine has the potential ability to boost all platforms across all ages. A few weeks ago, the European Medicines Agency has started to evaluate our application for a conditional marketing authorization. While we are unable to speculate on regulatory approval times, we're following the regulatory steps in open dialogue with health authorities to ensure they have all the information needed to get our vaccine authorized as soon as possible. Moving on to our last growth driver, we're definitely picking up pace in building an industry-leading pipeline with more than 90 projects. This number is a record for Sanofi.
I wanna highlight how we've strengthened our clinical pipeline in 2021 by adding 36 phase I and phase II projects in just one year. This number speaks volumes about our commitment to build an industry-leading sustainable pipeline with a steady stream of new assets that could transform the practice of medicine. Science has its own pace, so we need to sustain our efforts and think long term. The progress made by all of our R&D teams across the world over the past two years is truly impressive. Two months ago, we had the great opportunity to present our long-term plans in immunology and illustrate what we're thinking about way beyond Dupixent. The business objective is clear and bold, multiply by four times our immunology sales between now and 2030.
Dupixent is the backbone for the next decades, but it is time for people to materialize the unique dimension of our immunology pipeline with 13 new and potentially transformative medicines in diseases like atopic dermatitis, asthma, COPD, and others. Not only do we have multiple medicines in the pipeline, but we also have breaking new ground in how we want to deliver those innovations, either through injectables, oral, even topical. As we presented our long-term plans for investors, we also had a chance to meet and engage with some of the best key opinion leaders of the American Academy of Dermatology recently. The excitement of those top physicians was pretty incredible.
I've been in the industry for a long time, and I know those special moments where everything starts to feel like it's coming together. We have reached a point where we feel we can truly transform the practice of medicine and improve the lives of millions of patients with a range of chronic inflammatory diseases. Moving on to vaccines, we communicated in December 2021 how we intend to more than double our sales by the end of the decade. We are opening a new chapter in our vaccines story, building on a strong legacy of discovery, which of course finds its origins in France, in the region of Lyon. We've gathered our experts in mRNA in a center of excellence, and of the 10 new vaccines we expect to bring to the clinic by 2025, six will be mRNA.
We are expanding our pediatric footprint in new geographies, growing our leadership in influenza and meningitis, and exploring new growth in traditional areas such as pneumococcal disease and in wild new frontiers like chlamydia and acne. To cut to the chase, we have everything it takes to win in the future landscape of vaccines, the R&D expertise, the manufacturing might, decades of commercial innovation and access, the public health know-how, and perhaps most importantly of all, the determination to deliver. Talking about determination to deliver, I would like to highlight the very impressive progress made by our general medicines unit. The prioritization efforts made by the teams to focus on the allocation of our resources on key standards of care in areas like diabetes and cardiovascular and transplant is really starting to pay off.
In 2021, those core assets delivered a healthy growth of 5.6%. This performance reinforces our confidence to deliver roughly stable GBU sales in 2022 and grow our core assets mid-single-digit CAGR over the period 2020- 2025. We are also increasingly excited about the opportunities that lie ahead for us with Rezurock, our innovative new core asset acquired through Kadmon, and for which healthcare professionals continue to report positive clinical experience for transplant patients. The role general medicine plays in the execution of our global strategy is essential, and I'm impressed by the progress made by the teams. In consumer healthcare, 2021 and early 2022 clearly reinforced our confidence that there is significant value to unlock in our business. This is what we highlighted at our Capital Markets Day in early 2021 by putting forward three strategic priorities.
First, cutting and embracing complexity. Second, becoming a true fast-moving consumer healthcare company. Third, building our digital and data edge. We have also shared the goal to grow our priority brands above market growth as early as 2022 in key geographies. Our full year 2021 results showed that we're ahead of that commitment. By focusing on key brands, and thanks to the agility that starts to be unleashed by the carve-in model, our teams have been able to already close the gap with market growth. This is a remarkable achievement and a clear proof point that our strategy is bearing fruit. As we advance our business agenda, we are also very much focused on building this Sanofi of tomorrow. This includes making a global positive impact on our workforce, on our workplace, and on our communities.
That is why we unveiled in 2021 our first global diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy, covering some of the key strands of diversity. It is a long-term journey, and we will be a permanent work in progress. We are committed to take action and make Sanofi a place where our people can bring the best version of themselves. We were, for example, very proud last year to announce the implementation of a global standard for inclusive and equal parental leave. Since January the first of this year, 14 weeks paid leave are granted to any Sanofi employee welcoming a new child due to adoption, childbirth, or surrogacy, no matter the country they are working in and irrespective of gender or sexual orientation. More recently, we have also taken initiative, which is the first amongst our pharma peers, by setting up a diversity, equity, and inclusion board.
This board is composed of internal leaders and external advisors who have been pioneering the field for years. Building this Sanofi of tomorrow also means embracing the digital revolution. We're taking bold steps with a clear ambition to become the world's leading digital healthcare platform. By platform, we mean the tight integration of data, digital, and tech to provide solutions right across the value chain. 2021 and 2022 marked a clear moment in our commitment to unleash the potential of data and artificial intelligence to support the discovery of new medicines. The two partnerships we announced with Exscientia and Owkin are fully aligned with the therapeutic areas we selected as priorities for our future. With Exscientia, we established a strategic research collaboration to accelerate the discovery of precision engineered medicines across oncology and immunology.
We also announced a collaboration with Owkin, a French-American startup specialized in artificial intelligence and federated learning. Owkin has a unique approach to unlock insights from large healthcare datasets while preserving privacy. Working with them will help us discover potential breakthroughs for patients in lung cancer, breast cancer, and multiple myeloma. In addition, we also made an equity investment of EUR 180 million, which aligns with our commitment to partner with promising French companies and help them scale. It is indeed our responsibility and pride as a leading French and global company to support the growing French and health and tech ecosystem.
As we support the development of this ecosystem, we're also making the decisive choices to sharpen our efforts on breakthrough science and investing in our future. We, for example, shared further details in March of this year on how we're planning to position France at the center of our long-term mRNA strategy. We will invest close to EUR 1 billion over the next few years to build a complete end-to-end value chain on mRNA in France. These investments will allow us to accelerate our research and development efforts at our sites at Marcy-l'Étoile, including through the building of a specific launch unit focused on producing clinical batches.
The future evolutive vaccine facility at Neuville-sur-Saône will also be mobilized to increase the production capacity of mRNA drug substance, a direct consequence of our acquisition of Translate Bio, and a very good illustration of how innovation born in the United States can further drive incremental innovation here in France. I'll wrap my presentation up by highlighting a few concrete illustrations of how France is at the core of Sanofi's long-term ambition and its future. All our investments speak volumes about the leading role we want to play in putting the country and Europe back on the map of innovation. The pandemic has also shown us the impressive power of collaboration between public authorities, scientists, academia, and industry.
The recent creation of the Paris-Saclay Cancer Cluster to redefine cancer care and make France a world-class oncology biocluster, our investment in the French venture capital fund Jeito, or our contribution to the Future4Care initiative in digital health, all proof points of our commitment to foster a strong ecosystem here in France. Looking further, our continuous engagement to recruit and train more than 1,500 apprentices every year across our French sites adds more weight to the bright future we want to contribute building in the country. Our commitment goes beyond healthcare. It's about being committed to French society overall. That is why we naturally made the decision last year to become a partner of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. The games are a once in a lifetime moment that brings people together from all over the world.
As a French-based company with a truly global footprint, it was important for us to play our part in the success of the Paris Games. As we already get closer to my third-year anniversary at Sanofi, I must say I'm very proud and humbled to be at the helm of such an amazing company. Sanofi is on the move. We are a work in progress, but we are making impressive strides every day. This is made possible thanks to the incredible commitment of all our teams across the entire world. Thank you very much for your attention.
We share with the French a long tradition of technological progress, advance, learn, push our limits. This is our will to chase the miracle of science. It is our determination to find solutions for patients that gives us our energy. The starting point, the finishing line, and in between the two, we act to create tomorrow's medicine to make possible the impossible. To meet that huge challenge, we have a very important challenge, our ability to innovate our industrial strength. It is at the heart of our regions that we develop and produce medicines and vaccines distributed in the world. Modern, digital and sustainable, our research center contribute to making our territories lively. With the French scientific community and engaged partners, we carry a desire to renew life science for the health of the French. We don't always find.
Sometimes we fail, but always we try. We face with always being humble, never give up. We are passionate people, bold people, proactive. Every day, we want to change the lives of millions of peoples with prevention, vaccines, treatment of cancers, rare and chronic diseases or daily troubles. We have this unique chance, this mission, that forces us to improve people's lives, whatever our skills, our differences, our métiers. We're committed with the French population to build a more society that will be more inclusive, more responsible, more based on solidarity, where everybody will find its place. With always this spirit of innovation, this energy that unites us, science, excellence, France. This is our commitment within Sanofi in France. I'm now going to give the floor to John Reed, our world global head of R&D.
Bonjour, good afternoon. I'm delighted to share with you a brief update on our transformation at Sanofi R&D, which has turned Sanofi into a vibrant company with an increasingly sustainable pipeline of new medicines and vaccines that are literally changing the practice of medicine across the globe. If I can have the next slide. Thank you. Our pace of innovation is relentless. In 2021, we delivered seven positive pivotal readouts and celebrated eight major approvals, including Dupixent in additional immunological diseases, Libtayo and Zarxio for cancer, and Nexviazyme for Pompe disease, which strengthens our commitment to the fight against lysosomal storage diseases. Already, in the first quarter of this year, we have brought two more novel medicines onto the market, medicines for anemia, Enjaymo, and for another lysosomal storage disease, Xenpozyme, which I'll talk about later.
We're particularly proud that regulatory authorities across the globe have recognized the importance of our candidate medicines, where we have secured 28 special designations that can accelerate bringing these life-saving and life-changing medicines to patients in need. I'm particularly proud of the pace of progress with our internal research in our early pipeline, where last year we began clinical testing of 10 new molecules, a company record for R&D productivity. Moreover, in 2021, industry analysis of pharma company data reported that Sanofi now ranks among the top three pharma companies for cycle times in phases I, II, and III of clinical trials, as well as in the top three for overall success rates in the clinic and for cost efficiency. This is a far cry from the Sanofi of five years ago, and it happened because we put the right team and the right structure in place.
We've strategically reallocated resources and have reinvented the culture of Sanofi R&D to be far more nimble and courageous, taking smart risks in the pursuit of innovations that have the potential to change the practice of medicine, leading, not following. Moreover, our investments in innovative companies have brought fresh perspectives as well as powerful new drug discovery platforms, including mRNA therapeutics, synthetic biology, novel antibody technologies, and even cell therapies that inspire our scientists to push the frontiers of medicine. Now, none of this progress would have been possible if not for the many people who courageously volunteer to participate in our clinical research, over 87,000 in 2021. Thanks to them, our teams continue to advance new vaccines and medicines that have the potential to improve the lives of patients, families, and communities.
Thanks to the success of our monoclonal antibody medicine, Dupixent, that Paul referred to, Sanofi is rapidly becoming an industry leader in immunology. The ability of Dupixent to neutralize not one but two immune mediators of inflammation has made it a best-in-class and best-in-disease option for patients suffering from dermatological and respiratory diseases. Just five years ago, Sanofi had essentially no presence in the field of immunological diseases. Since then, we've transformed the understanding of so-called type two inflammation, and we've delivered Dupixent as the world's first advanced biologic for atopic dermatitis, making Sanofi the industry's fastest-growing company in dermatology. In addition to atopic dermatitis, we've also delivered Dupixent for treatment of respiratory diseases, namely asthma and also certain types of chronic sinusitis, providing patients with unprecedented relief for these diseases of the respiratory tract. We're not stopping here.
Dupixent is undergoing testing in multiple inflammatory and autoimmune diseases, as illustrated on the slide, with the potential to bring benefits of Dupixent to millions of patients. Just recently, we achieved positive data with Dupixent for two more diseases, eosinophilic esophagitis or EoE, our first gastroenterology indication, and prurigo nodularis or PN, another dermatology indication. The applications seeking registration of Dupixent for these diseases have been submitted, and if approved, Dupixent will become the world's first advanced therapy for EoE and for PN. I would note that these are terrible diseases that rob patients of quality of life. With EoE, patients develop inflammation of the esophagus and are eventually unable to eat solid foods, resorting to liquid diet for the rest of their life. For PN, patients suffer intense itching and unsightly skin blemishes. This slide here focuses on the burden of prurigo nodularis.
The photos here show the skin lesions that cover the patient's body. These nodules are intensely pruritic. In other words, they cause severe itch, so much so that some patients even resort to suicide to escape the incessant suffering. Dupixent was shown in two pivotal phase III studies to significantly reduce itch and to clear skin blemishes. Those data now forming the basis for our applications for approval with regulatory authorities. Now, Dupixent is a great foundation, as Paul remarked, but we have far more to offer patients suffering from autoimmune inflammatory diseases. Altogether at Sanofi, we've built a pipeline of 17 molecules across four immunology specialties of dermatology, respiratory, gastroenterology, and rheumatology. Dupixent and Kevzara are our anchors representing our market of products, but behind them are multiple exciting new mechanisms that could bring relief to millions of patients.
This slide shows only some of the current Sanofi immunology portfolio. I won't take time to review all the candidate medicines currently in our pipeline for immunology diseases, but I will draw your attention to just a couple take-home points. First, you'll notice that we're striving to conquer some very significant diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, COPD. COPD is one of the top five causes of death worldwide, and no new mechanisms for managing this respiratory disease have been available for more than 20 years. Based on promising early data, we are currently testing in pivotal phase III trials, both Dupixent, which neutralizes inflammatory mediators called interleukin-4 and interleukin-13, as well as another promising monoclonal antibody called itepekimab that neutralizes interleukin-33. If successful, these would be the world's first advanced therapies for COPD. Second, you'll find a lot of technological innovation in today's Sanofi immunology portfolio.
The designs of our molecules include monoclonal antibodies, multi-specific nanobodies, synthetic biology-derived recombinant proteins, as well as small molecule degraders and small molecules with reversible covalent features, among others. The administration routes include injectable medicines delivered by patients themselves at home using our proprietary auto-injectors to oral medicines to even topical medicines for dermatological indications. Now moving to the next slide. Leaving immunology therapy, let's go spend a few minutes on hematology and talk about one of the newest additions to the Sanofi product lineup, Rezurock, also known as belumosudil. Rezurock is an oral small molecule that inhibits a target called ROCK2. This medicine was recently approved for chronic graft-versus-host disease or GvHD. GvHD is a condition that arises in the setting of bone marrow transplant. Patients may receive bone marrow transplant for many reasons, but most common is because of malignancy such as leukemia, lymphoma or myeloma.
When the bone marrow comes from a donor, immune cells in the donor graft often attack the recipient's tissues and organs, representing a sort of autoimmune disease. In clinical trials, Rezurock was shown to inhibit the immune attack of host tissues, delivering exceptional benefits to patients and resulting in this medicine's approval by the FDA in the United States. The immune attack that characterizes GvHD can affect many organs and tissues, including the skin, where painful inflammation often occurs. This photo shows you'll observe the red inflamed skin of a GvHD patient before Rezurock, and then you will notice the clear, calm skin of this same patient after Rezurock. As a scientist, I must say Rezurock is exciting for me because it shows how all biology is connected and how different therapeutic areas converge.
The medical specialty that cares for GvHD patients is mostly hematologists, but the underlying pathological mechanism is immunologic in origin, and the clinical context most times is in the setting of treatment for malignancy or oncology. Rezurock shows how hematology, oncology, and immunology all converge, in this case delivering an impactful new therapy for GvHD patients. The next story in hematology that I'll share concerns efanesoctocog alfa, our long-acting factor replacement for hemophilia A, which I'll call Effa for short. Hemophilia is a genetically based bleeding disorder where patients lack a blood coagulation factor needed for proper blood clotting. This disease leads inevitably to joint destruction caused by massive hemorrhages in the joints, and it can be even lethal due to brain hemorrhages.
Efanesoctocog alfa is a highly engineered recombinant protein that restores factor VIII activity with durability that is best in class, giving normal or near normal levels of protection against bleeding with a once weekly at home infusion. efanesoctocog alfa recently demonstrated stellar practice changing levels of protection against bleeding in a pivotal phase III study, forming the basis for regulatory submissions that will occur in June this year. The patient testimonials following completion of the clinical trial were really heartwarming, such as comments made by a boy who, because of efanesoctocog alfa, can finally enjoy simple pleasures without fear of injury and bleeding.
Now, looking across our hematology portfolio, you'll see at Sanofi we have built in a short amount of time an industry-leading portfolio of medicines and drug candidates for hematology indications encompassing six approved products and five investigational molecules that cover a range of non-malignant hematological disorders, including disorders of red blood cells, namely anemias, disorders of platelets, blood coagulation, and bone marrow transplant. Similar to what we said about immunology, just four or five years ago, Sanofi's presence in the field of non-malignant hematology was tiny, limited to one project. Today, we have 11 products and product candidates for non-malignant hematology. Plus, although not shown here, we have at least six more products and product candidates for malignant hematology.
I'll now shift gears to rare diseases, rare genetically based diseases, and I'm honored and pleased to present the story of our newest product, Xenpozyme, also known as olipudase alfa. Xenpozyme is a recombinant protein that restores an enzyme missing in children and adults with a condition called ASMD or acidic sphingomyelinase deficiency. Because they're missing an enzyme needed to degrade certain types of lipids in the body, those fatty substances accumulate in tissues and organs of patients, eventually killing them. Among the organs impacted are liver and spleen, which become so filled with these lipids that patients have difficulty breathing, and their ability to enjoy normal physical activities is severely impaired. The photos here illustrate the journey of one young boy, Garrett, who at the age of six, before Xenpozyme, had massive hepatosplenomegaly.
Five years later, after entering our clinical trial, Garrett has the body of a normal, active 11-year-old boy. The testimony by Garrett's father tells the story and ends with the explanation, "Our son is going to live." I'm sorry. As a father of three sons myself, I get choked up every time I read the dad's comments. Xenpozyme is the world's first and only therapy available for ASMD. Our molecule received prestigious designations from health authorities around the world, including breakthrough designation from the FDA in the United States, prime designation from the EMA here in Europe, and Sakigake designation from the PMDA in Japan. Xenpozyme continues Sanofi's long tradition of providing life-saving solutions for patients with lysosomal storage diseases such as ASMD.
Over the years, we've brought eight enzyme replacement therapies or substrate reduction therapies to market for various lysosomal storage diseases, including Gaucher, Pompe, Fabry, MPS, and now ASMD. We are the world's leading company for lysosomal storage diseases and among the world's leading providers of solutions overall for rare diseases. I'll now wrap up with a brief update on the vaccines pipeline, shining the spotlight on an amazing molecule called nirsevimab. You know, when we talk about immuno science, for many people, vaccines might be the first thing that springs to mind, and no wonder. Over the past two years, the incredible power of vaccines and immunization has never been clear. At Sanofi, we've opened new chapters in our vaccines R&D, building on our already strong legacy, and nirsevimab is indicative of the new frontiers we're blazing.
Rather than coaxing the body's immune system to produce protective antibodies, nirsevimab is a highly engineered monoclonal antibody manufactured using recombinant DNA technology that neutralizes the respiratory syncytial virus, RSV. We developed nirsevimab as a protection against RSV for infants, babies so young that their immune systems are not yet mature enough to generate protective antibodies using normal immunization approaches. The significance of nirsevimab is that RSV is the world's leading cause of hospitalization for infants, representing a major public health burden. In clinical trials, just one injection of nirsevimab was sufficient to prevent, on average, three out of every four hospitalizations, while also reducing the need for medical care for RSV and pneumonia by over 75%. The regulatory filings of nirsevimab with health authorities have begun, and we hope to make this amazing new approach to respiratory pathogen protection available to all infants very soon.
Because RSV isn't just a disease of newborns, we are looking beyond infant immunization with other ways of preventing RSV infection in toddlers and in the elderly. This last slide shows our Sanofi's vaccine pipeline and is presented, divided into categories of established versus new areas. We continue to be the world's largest producer of influenza virus vaccines and are now working towards the possibility of offering both traditional protein-based vaccines and also mRNA vaccines for influenza. In that regard, the rapid acceleration of mRNA as a validated technology for vaccines has inspired us to make major investments in this new approach to vaccinology. As Paul told you, we acquired Translate Bio, a leader in mRNA technology, and gathered experts into an mRNA center of excellence that spans from mRNA vaccine development design to clinical development to manufacturing. Over the next ten
Of the next 10 vaccines we expect to bring to the clinic by 2025, we expect that six of these will be based on the mRNA platform. While investing heavily in mRNA, we recognize that not all pathogens are amenable to the mRNA approach, and thus we remain committed to protein and carbohydrate vaccines for diseases such as meningitis and pneumococcal pneumonia, as well as for many of the pediatric vaccines where Sanofi has traditionally been an industry leader. Our multi-platform manufacturing capacity is critical to delivering on the promise of these innovations. In fact, no other company can leverage as many technologies as we can.
Armed with an expansive toolbox of vaccines technologies, we also plan to blaze new trails in the pursuit of vaccines against bacteria and bacterial products that cause, for example, acne, an excellent fit with our therapeutics for dermatology, and for bacteria responsible for sexually transmitted diseases such as chlamydia, which can cause irreparable damage to the reproductive system and represent a common cause of infertility for women. Not shown in this slide is the contribution Sanofi has been making to the battle against the corona pandemic, coronavirus pandemic, which has included providing emergency manufacturing capacity for hundreds of millions of doses of mRNA and DNA vaccines made from other companies, as well as developing our own protein-based COVID vaccines, which we've begun to submit for regulatory approval with the authorities.
I leave you with this collage of photos of some of the patients we serve with Sanofi's broad range of healthcare products. For us at Sanofi, everything begins and ends with the patients that we serve as we chase the miracles of science to improve people's lives. Thank you.
When the only thing we can say is that we don't have a treatment for you, as a healthcare professional, this is a really difficult moment. Seven years ago, my husband was diagnosed with early Parkinson's disease. He was one of the most sociable and energetic athlete I had known. I love him, and as a nurse, clinical trials allowed me to believe in something. A lot of people have already benefited from the miracles of modern medicine. Thanks to that, they were able to find their laugh back. I really believe that we are chasing the miracles of science to improve people's life. This is what I feel every day.
Thank you. I'm now going to give the floor to Sandrine Bouttier-Stref, who is the global leader for CSR.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, good afternoon.
A year ago, during the general meeting of 2021, I was announcing the launch of new Sanofi commitments for Sanofi. It's a new but also more ambitious CSR commitments. They express the desire of the group to be a mobilized actor in societal commitment. They're totally integrated in the Play to Win strategy proposed by the Comex end of 2019. As an international company, we're aware of our responsibility to address the challenges the world is facing today, like inequalities. Of course, the inequalities can take several shapes. They can have an incidence on life expectancy, on access to basic services, access to healthcare, education, water. They can also threaten human rights, increase discriminations, racism, and poverty.
Among the other challenges and far from being a problem only for the future, they're already visible in the world, the effect of climate change, temperature rise, lack of water, forest fires, sea level rise, biodiversity. The UN has announced that we now have 21 climate refugees in the world. All of these events are not without a consequence on healthcare, health and healthcare. To this day, 2.5 billion people do not or cannot access quality healthcare. More than 35 million people die every year of non-communicable diseases, 28 million of which are in low to middle income countries. As a pharma company, we have to play our part, and our biggest contribution is to promote access to healthcare drugs and for to those populations.
Of course, we cannot solve all problems, meet all challenges, but we have decided to commit where we can make a difference, where we can really have an impact. Our strategy is based on four pillars, aligned with a corporate strategy, access to healthcare, innovate for vulnerable populations, preserve the planet, diversity, inclusion, and engagement with communities. Those are not only ambitions, but really to transform ambitions into concrete actions for which we have made progress in the last year. Some of those actions are already delivering some impact. On the screen, you have a view of the progress made, for all commitments made by the Comex. You see the results end of 2021, as well as for the first quarter of 2022.
Beyond those figures which show progress on all commitments, I'm not going to comment the whole slide, but I would like to share with you a few important highlights illustrating Sanofi's performance on all of those commitments. First, Sanofi Global Health, the cornerstone of our access commitment. This nonprofit entity, launched in April 2021, wants to provide 30 essential medication in the 40 poorest countries in the world. As you can see, we've accelerated by reaching much more patients, especially for NCDs, where the needs are the most important. It's not only a question of providing drugs, we also need to accompany with programs.
In particular, we have started a program at the beginning of the year, deployed in several countries, for the implementation of digital tools, in order to help diagnose, and improve management of diabetes and hypertension, while making sure that the measures implemented are adapted to the local context. Since access is one of our priorities, we continue our efforts to identify innovative mechanisms, to make sure that the products in the pipeline become accessible where patients need them in the world, and within two years after their first launch. On the second pillar, in terms of innovation, we keep developing our road map regarding sleep sickness and polio. We've also made progress on pediatric cancers. That's a very ambitious objective. It is the first cause of mortality in children.
We've already identified a candidate molecule that has just given rise to a new protocol that should be launched beginning of next year. In that respect, we have signed partnerships with renowned organization in this area in order to accelerate the deployment of our road map. Regarding the environment, end of 2021, we have raised our level of ambition by committing to become carbon neutral by 2030 and net zero emission by 2050. We are in fact advancing our objective by 20 years in the context of the Paris Agreement. We have made progress in reducing CO2 emission. We're reinforcing our actions to reduce even more our own emission, and we are transiting to a decarbonated economy. We've also launched a commitment program for providers in order to accelerate the decarbonation of their activities.
Finally, with diversity inclusion, with more than 95,000 employees and of 142 different nationalities, we're making sure they can all make the most of their potential in a diverse and inclusive organization. We've improved gender parity. We have a global program. We've launched five ERG on different subject, like gender, handicap, generation. All this in order to promote and make the most of the communities concerned throughout the company. We, as Paul said, we've just implemented a DE&I Council board, whose vocation is to make sure that the strategy is executed and followed. Sanofi is the first pharma company to put in place that kind of structure. I would like to share with you also the improvement of our scores in 2021, beginning of 2022, established by various rating agencies that reflects our performance and strategy.
As you can see, we've improved on all indexes, be it for global ESG indexes or specialized ratings, scores like climate, water, and employment. I'd like to mention in particular that S&P has recognized Sanofi as one of the most efficient companies in terms of CSR. Sanofi is the first pharma company in the world to obtain such recognition, thanks notably to its access commitment through Sanofi Global Health. I'd like to take advantage of that to say that we talk about all of our ESG performance every three months when we present the earnings.
I'd like also to say a few words about governance, even though it was already talked about, notably the involvement of the board of directors, the committee of nomination, governance, and CSR, including skilled members who review their strategy on a regular basis, as well as CSR orientation in alignment with corporate strategy and making sure that we follow performance. 15% of the objectives related to Paul's variable remuneration are related to CSR. This year, for the first time in Sanofi, we have set CSR objectives to each members of the Comex, collective and individual objectives aligned to our societal commitments of 2022. That proves the involvement of all of the Comex. Indeed, we have started a transformation process for CSR. We're moving ahead fast.
I said with a lot of confidence, but I remain humble. There's still a lot of things to do, and the various crisis we go through mean that we have to rethink our models, our ways of thinking, and we have to commit, because transforming patients' lives is also contributing to improving the society in which they live. That is part of our responsibility. It is also Sanofi's commitment to meet today's and tomorrow's challenges, and to raise our level of societal ambition to do even more. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you very much, Sandrine. I will now give the flow to Jean-Baptiste Chasseloup de Chatillon, who is going to present our performance and results for 2021.
Ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders. After this presentation by Sandrine, of course, I wanted to start my presentation by highlighting Sanofi's commitment in terms of sustainable finance. Indeed, one year after innovating in terms of sustainable finance with our revolving credit lines that are indexed on sustainable development indicators, we brought a new contribution to the development on the sustainable finance market with the successful launch last March of our first issue of obligations of bonds indexed on a sustainable development indicator. This indicator is related to Sanofi's commitment to improve access to essential drugs in lowest income countries. Regarding our financial performance, in 2021, business EPS grew by 15.5% at constant foreign exchange, so a higher level than the guidance announced of roughly 14%. Revenues, meanwhile, grew by 7.1% at constant Forex to EUR 37.8 billion.
Beyond the business EPS goal that was exceeded, our tax rate remained in line with forecasts. Finally, once again, we propose to grow our ordinary dividend as was presented by our chair. Moreover, beyond the payout of a cash dividend of EUR 3.33 per share, we are proposing an additional exceptional dividend in kind for a distribution of roughly 58% of the share capital of EUROAPI. I will give you more details about this distribution at the end of my presentation. Our business is split within three segments: pharmacy, consumer healthcare, and vaccines and pharmacy. Business growth was 7.6% at constant Forex, mostly driven by specialty care, reflecting the strong performance of Dupixent.
The decline in business for general medicine is due to the decline in sales of non-strategic products, reflecting products discontinuations or disposals in line with our Play to Win strategy. Strategic products for GenMed grew by 5.6%. The 4.6% increase of our consumer healthcare business reflects the sustained growth of digestive health and pain categories, which more than offset the disposal of non-strategic brands. In the context marked by COVID, vaccine performance was 6.8%, buoyed by another record year for our flu vaccine and growth in our meningitis vaccines. Moving on to the P&L, net business income grew by 15.5% at constant Forex, or more than our revenues, which grew by 7.1%.
Our gross margin rate grew by 1.2 percentage point to 71.3%, reflecting a favorable product mix related to specialty med and also industrial productivity gains. Our operating income growing by 13.3 % at constant Forex, of course reflects the improvement in our gross margin rate, but also our operating efficiency while maintaining major CapEx and the reallocation of our resources into growth drivers and key R&D projects in line with our strategy. In 2021, our R&D expenditure reached nearly EUR 5.7 billion, up 4.3%. As you know, in December 2019, we communicated our plan to achieve EUR 2.4 billion in cost savings by the end of 2022.
Since 2019, we've achieved roughly EUR 2.4 billion in cumulative savings, of which EUR 2.1 billion were generated at the level of operating expenses, as you can see on the chart. Moreover, we generated EUR 300 million in savings impacting our production costs. Regarding R&D, we've already reached our goal of EUR 500 million in savings, thanks to prioritization, operating efficiency, and the discontinuation of diabetes and cardiovascular. Over the same period, we invested an extra EUR 700 million in R&D in priority projects and recent targeted acquisitions. Regarding SG&A, we invested roughly EUR 1.3 billion in our growth drivers in specialty care and vaccines, which were partly offset by the EUR 1.2 billion in savings made by general medicine and lower SG&A.
In sum, we are confident about our reach, reaching our goal of EUR 2.5 billion in savings by 2022. Most savings in 2022 will be reinvested in our growth drivers and our key R&D projects. Our CapEx reached a high level of EUR 1.4 billion in 2021, and we are maintaining efforts in the production of biologics, pharmacies, and vaccines. Moving on to the IFRS consolidated net income, which reached EUR 6,223 million in 2021, down 49.4%, reflecting the 7.2 billion euros gain related to the disposal of Regeneron shares in 2020.
The cascade from net income from activities in 2021 of EUR 8.213 billion to IFRS net consolidated income is due to depreciation of intangibles for past acquisitions, mainly Genzyme, Bioverativ, Consumer Healthcare of Boehringer Ingelheim, and Ablynx, impairment of fixed intangibles, restructuring costs related to simplification initiatives, and the tax impact of these elements. Our balance sheet at 31 December 2021 was very solid. We have equity for a value of EUR 69 billion, up 5.9%.
Our net financial debt at the end of 2021 reached EUR 10.2 billion, up slightly by 1.4%, reflecting the financing of acquisitions for Translate Bio for EUR 2.4 billion, Kadmon for EUR 1.9 billion, and Kymab for EUR 932 million. Our Free Cash Flow reached EUR 8,996 million in 2021, up 16% compared to 2020. We doubled our Free Cash Flow since 2018, and we more than exceeded our goal announced in December 2019 to increase our Free Cash Flow by 50% in 2022 compared to 2018. This strong performance reflects growth in our business and the improvement in our working capital requirements variation. We published our very good results for Q1 2022 last Thursday.
In the first quarter, 2022, revenues were EUR 9,674 million, up 12.6% on a reported basis and up 8.6% at constant Forex. This growth was mostly sustained by the continuation of the strong performance of Dupixent and significant increase in sales in consumer healthcare. Business CER in Q1 increased by 20.5% on a reported basis and 16.1% at constant Forex. As you know, we also communicated in December 2019 an operating margin guidance from business for a 30% in 2022, and we're on the right track to meet this goal. Our business operating margin grew by 27.1%. Grew from 27.1% - 28.4% in 2021. We also have a business EPS goal, which is low double digit for 2022.
Given the favorable change of some currencies, especially the US dollar, we expect that the impact of Forex on business EPS in 2022 will range between +4% and +5%. As you can see, we are confident about the quality of our results and the outlook for our business. Now moving on to the EUROAPI share distribution. You can see the steps in the creation of EUROAPI. We announced this decision in February 2020 in order to create a European leader in the development, manufacturing, and marketing of pharmaceutical active pharmaceutical ingredients to help secure the manufacturing and supply capacity for APIs in Europe and in the world with a backdrop of growing shortages of essential drugs for patients.
EUROAPI will become a strategic supplier for Sanofi, and in October 2021, we signed a manufacturing and supply contract for five years and also CDMO, so Contract Development and Manufacturing Organization contracts. The first listing of EUROAPI shares is planned for the sixth of May on Euronext Paris, and the distribution of EUROAPI shares will happen on the tenth. Given the current volatility of market conditions and a strong increase in our cash flow since 2018, we've decided to distribute EUROAPI shares in kind via an exceptional additional dividend. The aim is to secure the operation and to make EUROAPI quickly independent from Sanofi, which is key to its success to become a choice partner for all pharmaceutical companies. The distribution parity will be one EUROAPI share for 23 Sanofi shares, and roughly 58% of EUROAPI shares will be distributed.
If you look at the share ownership structure of EUROAPI, Bpifrance will become a long-term reference shareholder. Bpifrance has pledged to buy back 12% of EUROAPI shares for a maximum amount of EUR 150 million. The acquisition price should be determined based on the weighted average share price weighted by volume for 30 days given the first day of the listing. After the operation, Sanofi will have 30% of the capital and voting rights of EUROAPI and will be a long-term strategic partners. Stability of share ownership for EUROAPI is essential. That's why over 45% of EUROAPI shareholders signed a holding commitment, as you can see on the slide. With the EUROAPI distribution in 2022, Sanofi is still looking to create value for all stakeholders, including shareholders. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Jean-Baptiste. I will now give the floor to the statutory auditors who will summarize their report.
Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholders, it is my honor, on behalf of the College of Statutory Auditors of your company, Ernst & Young and PricewaterhouseCoopers, to present the reports that we've drawn up for this combined general meeting. We issued several reports in fulfillment of our mission for the fiscal year 2021. First of all, our reports on the consolidated and statutory accounts of your company, and also our special report on regulated third-party conventions. These reports are visible on pages 171, 278, and 281 of the universal registration document. I will now give you a synthetic account of these reports.
These reports indicate that we have certified unreservedly the annual and the statutory and consolidated accounts of Sanofi as presented. Our report on consolidated and statutory accounts remind you of the key audit points, i.e., the items that we deem to be the most important as part of the audit of Sanofi accounts. These key points, there are four of them for the consolidated accounts. First of all, the value of other intangibles on the balance sheet of your group for a net value of a bit more than EUR 21 billion. Then discounts, rebates, and price reductions granted as part of your group's business activity in the U.S. Then product risk and other litigation to which your group is exposed, and then the tax risk related to the group's operation.
In our report, we explain our view of the risks attached to these key points, as well as the way that we gauge them as part of our audit. Regarding the statutory accounts, the key audit point that we are mentioning is about the evaluation of equity investments on the company's balance sheet for a net value of close to EUR 86 billion. On page 281, you'll find our special report on regulated third-party conventions. In the first part of the report, we mention that we were not given notice of any new convention to be subject to your approval this year. In the second part of the report, we give details of the condition of the conventions that were already approved and which were further executed during the fiscal year.
These conventions were signed between Sanofi-Aventis Groupe, a subsidiary of your company, and Dassault Systèmes, of which the general manager was a director of your company until the thirtieth of April 20 21, for the supply of a software solution and the implementation services for this solution. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, dear shareholder, these were the items that we were to give you an account about fo r our mission. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Philippe. What about the quorum? Shall we give it now, or do you want to talk about the questions?
Well, first, let's look at the quorum to see whether we can validly decide.
Absolutely. So the final quorum, 17,585 shareholders are represented, representing 873,688,151 shares. We can validly decide on all matters. Before we open the Q&A session with the audience, I wanted to remind you that we received two written questions, including a batch of ten questions asked by the Forum for Responsible Investment, and the answers to these written questions were published on our website in compliance with the law. Moreover, we received three questions recently by email that we are going to answer in a minute. After that, with the management, we will answer the questions that you'll ask directly.
The questions sent electronically are, first, what is the strategy that Sanofi is going to focus on mostly for 2022? Well, I think that the presentation that was given by Paul provided most of the answer to this question. Unless Paul wants to give additional information, I suggest that we move on to the second question.
How do you see your development in China in terms of V-VBP programs? The new variable pricing, the price control program, which in the last three years has significantly changed the price landscape in the whole of China. Paul, over to you.
Thank you, Serge. Excellent question. Just a couple of things. Firstly, it's a very difficult situation in China, as you know, and we've worked tirelessly to make sure that our people in many places actually receive food. We've also worked extremely hard to set high standards from a health and safety perspective to keep our three manufacturing sites open and prioritize the safety of our people. For VBP, I think people look to Sanofi and the work that Olivier Charmeil and the team have done over the years to say, this is how you handle tendering and the new pricing environment in China. It's not an easy situation. You know that the Chinese government has moved along. It's now rewarding innovation, but at the same time, it's asking for significant price cuts on the older, more established medicines.
It's offering volumes as access to such a huge population in exchange. Those price cuts are significant. We manage it through Plavix. I think it was brilliant work by the team led by Olivier and Pierre in China. I think in insulin and the glargines, yes, we've taken a 30% price cut, or sales cut rather, but we are working hard to bring back the volumes because we have access to a bigger environment. It's a well-informed question to ask. It's a new dynamic in a major market. Firstly, our people are as safe as they can be, and secondly, we keep manufacturing medicines, and thirdly, we've adjusted better than almost any other company to the changing price environment.
Thank you for this answer about this adapting to the new price situation. The third question is about Ukraine, and it's not so much what is it that you do in Ukraine, but also how do you address the issue of clinical trials in Ukraine? Because whether in Ukraine or in Russia, we do have significant clinical trials for some of the new products. Paul, what's the answer to that one?
You know, it's been a very challenging time for everybody involved. I think, again, to give some broader context, the first thing to do was to make sure our people were safe in Ukraine. Again, Olivier and the team did an excellent job to make sure that our general managers could provide what was needed and including safe route out for people. We allocated and, effectively, to this point, protected everybody that worked for the company. We moved our Ukrainians out of Russia, our Russians out of Ukraine. We led an evacuation under recommendations from the government. As the leading French company with the most sophisticated knowledge, working knowledge of the country and the security measures, we led a convoy, in fact, of French companies out through 33 checkpoints at quite a demanding time. That's on one level.
The second level is we continue to ship medicines for everybody that needs it in Ukraine, and we should do, even if it's difficult. The head of our distribution center went to fight. We had to have a backup plan, because that's the nature of what we're dealing with in Ukraine. Of course, that's his right, and he did the right thing. For us, we needed to make sure the medicines could get to those that needed them. Secondly, the clinical trial patients extend beyond Ukraine and even into Russia. Of course, we all deplore violence and deplore war as the solution to anything. There are, for us, 1,700 patients between Russia and Ukraine that are in clinical studies. That means they're on investigational medicines.
That means they're seeing doctors regularly to make sure they're safe and well and responding with no adverse events. It also means we're collecting that data to make sure we can give that to regulators to get drugs approved further down the line. Many of those patients became refugees. We had to find these patients in Poland and find another investigator to meet the patient, to be able to review the patient's safety and wellness, and then see if we could continue with the clinical program. Why so many patients in Russia and Ukraine in clinical studies? It is, firstly, just a phenomenon that the healthcare systems are well developed, but access to innovation is more restricted. The second thing is the prevalence of diseases such as multiple sclerosis and COPD are greater in those countries.
We research those areas there because that makes more sense. We continue, by the way, to support our patients and anybody that takes one of our essential medicines in Russia. I know that's unpopular with people, but the general population who had no choice in what happened next, but had and have no choice about whether they get a medicine, particularly if there is no medicine available locally, we do the right thing. As Serge alluded to in his speech, we're a healthcare company. We're purpose-driven. If somebody needs a medicine, then we'll do our very best to get it wherever they are, whatever the circumstances. I will say we stopped all commercial activities in Russia. Anything that would make profit, anything that would drive, you know, additional, you know, growth in the economy in Russia was stopped.
We're doing the right thing, and it's not easy. Our clinical operations team have fought incredibly to maintain the safety and the monitoring of these patients. I'm very proud, actually, of everybody that's been involved.
If I may add one comment, obviously the overall situation. Well, what I've seen within the company is that there's remarkable solidarity between the teams. The Ukrainian counterparts and many Sanofi staff in many European countries have actually welcomed in their homes Ukrainian refugee families, and not just our, well, our own employees. I mean, families that wanted to leave were able to find accommodations in our countries, and we did what we could to make them feel better. There was a huge gesture of generosity, not just donations collected by Sanofi employees. As a company, we made a significant contribution. I'm not just talking about contribution in kind, I mean, medicines, but also financial, monetary contributions. Within Sanofi, there was outstanding solidarity.
I believe we can have questions from the audience now. You may have a sign. Sign number eight.
Mr. CEO, Chairman of the Board. My name is Patrick Kanen. I'm an independent shareholder. I'm most impressed with the pipeline presented by Mr. John Reed on medications being developed and those already being marketed. There you have Dupixent, which is like a miracle drug in view of the many diseases it addresses. We might be concerned, though, that in the long run, there might be trade-offs. I mean, if one drug can address four or five diseases at the same time, maybe there's some hidden drawbacks. I mean, as you had with Depakine for the past 10 years. Anyway. By the way, the word Depakine was not uttered.
What's the financial and legal outcome of this case that was very much in the forefront for a while? I'm less proud of the inflated compensation package of Paul Hudson. Mr. Kron showed us a fine slide which showed the fixed part of the income and then the bonus performance shares. The slide wasn't big enough to show the total amount. I totaled it up. We don't have the performance documents as in previous AGMs. For 2021, we're supposed to vote upon the. I mean, maybe the CFO might challenge this, but we're looking at anywhere between EUR 10 million and EUR 11 million for the year 2021.
What is on the table for 2022, because we found a vaccine for COVID, we have a 10% increase, sorry, 8% increase in the fixed part of the compensation and another 10% in shares. Of course, the share price has gone up, and we're happy about that, but we're looking all in all at like EUR 20 million - 25 million for the two years 2021 and 2022. I'm a bit concerned because while, I mean, it is all employees of the company that were involved in that performance. Does this mean that they will also get an 8% raise on their salaries?
How are you gonna work out with the unions these raises, inflation itself in France is running at 5%, so how are you going to address that?
Now, if I may go into the detail in the way the board of directors addresses these issues. Let me remind you that the compensation package for Paul Hudson was worked out about at the same time three years ago, and it is not our policy to revisit this compensation package on an annual basis, so the compensation package had not changed for the past three years.
Number two, you added in this year's package about EUR 2 million, which I believe is what was worked out at when he joined the company to make up for the lost income when he left Novartis, and I checked that out. In fact, this compensation was less than the amount he had to forgo when he decided to join us. What are we discussing here? It was the job of the board to try and recruit a person who would be in a position to take Sanofi to the top. That is to find on the global market of pharmaceutical industry leaders, which is a very competitive market.
By the way, this is one of the very few markets where company leaders are not necessarily well, citizens of the country where the company is implanted. We had to find the best possible leader for the country. We might get it wrong. It's not an exact science. It's been three years now that Paul has been with us. What I can tell you that not only I can say on my personal behalf, but in the name of the board as a whole, and the market was able to recognize this, that the performance over the past three years that we have before us. We can't tell about the future, but we're fortunate to have at the head of Sanofi an outstanding leader.
Now, why should an outstanding leader accept to be even less well-paid than the least well-paid of the CEOs of the pharmaceutical industry? This is the real world here. We're not fantasizing things. What's the base of comparison? We are looking at CEOs in the pharmaceutical industry and more specifically those in Europe. I'm not even looking at American pharmaceutical companies. I mean, that is part of the picture. But even if you zoom in on all these parameters, I mean, that is all the elements of comparison for comparing Paul Hudson's compensation package compared to his European counterparts. There's only one pay that is lower than his, and that is the CEO of Bayer.
I don't mean to cast aspersions, but I mean, well, Bayer's performance are not up to Sanofi's performance over the past three years. We believe, and we really did weigh this carefully. We felt it was our responsibility to attract and keep a leader whom we could trust and support. I mean, nonetheless, we could have full discussions at the board. This is not a rubber stamp organization, and it is not the case that the CEO runs the board. There were cases in the past where the independence of the board was not sufficient to determine the rules of the game. I can tell you that now, we do have a leader who is fulfilling his obligations.
As to the overall compensation package, we're not talking about an annual increase. Of course, that doesn't because the rest of the staff get annual wage increases. Our employees got overall a 2.6% raise. To add, you have to add an important element in Sanofi, which is profit sharing. We're looking at the lowest wages at Sanofi, five months worth of pay and up to two months worth of pay for the higher wages. This is how we can look at the situation.
You can still, you can always decide that this is too much, but still it is our responsibility and we are at peace with this because it is our responsibility to provide the best possible leadership, not just in terms, well, not just for the CEO, but for the Executive Committee as a whole. I hope that provides an appropriate answer. Dupixent is going to possibly be one of the most successful medicines of all time, particularly with the benefit it brings to so many patients and so many diseases. The reason it's an excellent question is now with these major breakthroughs on certain pathways and diseases, you start to deal with adjacent diseases simultaneously, and you break new ground. That's a new phenomenon really that we live in the industry.
You know, we watch very carefully the profile, both from a safety and efficacy perspective as we go into each new indication.
What we can say is that Dupixent has frankly reached the probably the well-accepted standard now being first in class, meaning it launched first, and being best in class, meaning that its profile of safety and efficacy is going to be hard to beat by anybody else. Now, not all patients are the same in all diseases. When John presented the slide around the immunology portfolio, you know, five years from now, there'll be patients that perhaps aren't responding as well, or need an extra oral tablet on top, or perhaps a topical, as we mentioned, for a stubborn patch of skin in AD or a different approach. We will raise the efficacy bar by offering patients combination opportunities or new breakthroughs or longer drug intervals.
It's just the way that science is breaking in this direction, and we're well-placed with the industry-leading portfolio to not only deliver with Dupixent but that follows it next. Would you like me to comment on?
On Depakine?
Yeah.
On Depakine, this is a complex legal situation because if you add up all the, well, the lawsuits, there's a civil lawsuit, there's a criminal lawsuit, there's one, and then there's a class action as well. And plus one facing the administrative courts. Unfortunately, under French law, there's no way to arrive at a settlement, an out-of-court settlement that can settle the matter once and for all. That cannot exist in France. Therefore, we have no choice. Given the various, well, ways and means used by the various parties, we have no choice but to make our case. There are many lawsuits facing us. But let me just remind you that Depakine as a drug is an essential product.
It is in spite of the tragedies. I mean, we're well aware of what happened to some families. Nonetheless, it is our responsibility to maintain Depakine on the market because it is the only drug to which some patients with epilepsy can respond. We are well aware of this responsibility. At this stage, we have no way to reach a sort of an overall settlement. As I said, we have no choice but to go through all the episodes as they unfold. It is for us to defend our position, which once again is that we told in due time the health authorities. We...
It took us years to convince the health authority to change the leaflet that you find in the box which contains the drug, and that the blame laid on us in terms of liability is simply unfounded. In fact, there have been a number of rulings to that effect. There's also the state's responsibility because well the state, as it were, is the legal person that determines the information that must be passed on to the patients. There's also that of physicians. Indeed, well, some doctors went to the informed consent of patients before administering the drug. It's highly complex because of the great diversity of situations. In any case, it's a very unfortunate situation indeed.
As I said, we have no choice but to go on doing what we've done since the beginning. We are listening to the cases of the victims, but we haven't got the legal lever to make any difference to the procedure. Panel, sign number six, sorry.
CEO, sir, and chairman, I have three questions. I am an independent shareholder. I have three comments and questions. Number one, here we have individual investors who are quite remarkable. I mean, individual shareholders or big investors. We do believe that we deserve a high level, a high quality CEO as well. That's my first comment. On your website, if you go to the board of directors, you have actually been ranked.
You have been appointed as a director on Kering's board in April last. Then about the EUROAPI shares because the company is being listed. If you have shares held in a securities portfolio, what we call a securities portfolio under the French system, not a securities savings plan, you will find that there are taxes that apply to about 30% on the value which you do not know now, but which you will find out with the opening price on the 6th of June. There might be a bad surprise there regarding that tax, that withholding tax applying to the securities portfolio. My question, you say you are a world leader in vaccines and congratulations.
Why is it then that you were not able to provide the COVID vaccine while others were able to? Is it because your R&D teams were not good enough, or is it because you were unable to secure a partnership with a more effective pharmaceutical company? That's my question number two. Number one. Number two, what will be the role of DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion? I mean, that comes in rather late in the wake of the failure of your vaccine adventure. Number three, you have displayed a strong digital global strategy. Where does it stand today? What are the digital competencies of the board since Bernard Charlès left? And then, what about Equasens in Nancy? Where does that stand now?
Well, let me make two comments because they were not questions, but comments. It is true that I was appointed last week to join the board of Kering, and indeed, that is the very reason why the website was not updated. It was not to conceal my appointment. Regarding EUROAPI, your EUROAPI, well, you're right. When you pay out a dividend, there is a withholding tax, and that will depend on the share price of EUROAPI when it is listed, but there's no two ways about it. I mean, unless you put your money in a securities savings plan, you have to pay that tax. There will be a 30% tax.
Having said that 30%, well, that's much less than it used to be, at least for certain tax brackets. In any case, on the vaccine, I said so last year, but Paul will speak to this as well. Well, there was a failure in terms of meeting the deadline, at least to coming out fast. That was a failure, and it was very painful. I mean, everybody was expecting us to be able to deliver, and it's quite rare to find ourselves in a situation where the whole world is waiting, is expecting a result and not being able to deliver on that in due time. Now, well, we didn't underestimate mRNA.
In fact, we were the only ones to come up or to work on two vaccines of that technology. As regards to mRNA, we knew that we were lagging behind somewhat, but we still continued with the tests and trials. Regarding the recombinant protein vaccine, well, because we were very short of time, but of course, working under time pressure was not in the culture of Sanofi Pasteur, because that was what it was called at the time. Having a shortened lapse of time meant that there was some lapses in the company. Nonetheless, we forged ahead, we continued, and we have eventually come up with a product which everybody says is very good.
Now, of course, this is bad news for public health, bad news for us to have experienced that delay. You're right, it was a failure, well, not in substance, because at the end, we are coming up with the vaccine all right, but we had to be able to act fast, and we were able to miss that deadline. Nonetheless, because we're pulling through in the end, there should be no doubt as to our team's R&D abilities regarding mRNA. Ever since 2018, we had that agreement with Translate Bio, which we acquired last year, and now we are in clinical trials for a number of products.
We are satisfied that Translate Bio and the additional investment, the recruitment of teams that have been working in there in mRNA anyway, will enable us to make up for lost time, and that we do believe we'll be a major player in mRNA. By the way, let me remind you, it's not just vaccines, but that also includes specialty care, and the platform being built here is a universal platform that can serve indeed all of Sanofi's be used. Paul would like to add something.
Difficult to summarize two years of nonstop work by our vaccine team and just to answer your question. I'll start by saying I've never been more proud of everybody involved in our vaccine effort from day one until today. The people did incredible work. Many of them wouldn't leave the scientific bench or the experiment for the entire time. While I understand there's an emotional component to not delivering, some things for you to consider. We knew from January, February, in fact, when we announced that we would try and do something, February 2020, we knew we were late. We made a decision because mRNA, we would have to wait a year to see if it worked. Our conversations with governments and health authorities were simple: We can't wait a year to see if mRNA works to then start trials on your vaccine.
Start it at risk now, because if we get to December of 2020 and there is no vaccine, we can't wait another year. It's obvious. We embarked on it. We reminded everybody that it would be a challenge 'cause we used a flu platform, recombinant baculovirus, as mentioned. We used that platform because it's tried and tested, but it's slow, and it is what it is. We went after it and worked night and day, the team did, to try and make it work. There were no other really approved recombinant baculovirus COVID vaccines. That tells you that the 15 or 20 that began will be one of two maybe that actually make it to booster status later this year. Our team did incredible things. Now, you may say, "But how could you not have got it right?
How could you have stumbled?" It was pretty straightforward. We don't stumble in a regular year because we take five years. Five years, and we develop specific tests to show how good our vaccine is at each stage of the journey. We couldn't wait five years. If we told you, "Actually, we'll have a perfect vaccine that will be right first time, and it will be available in five years," you would've said, "Stop immediately." So we moved at a speed that is unprecedented. Unprecedented. That word is not overused enough in this context. Our team did an incredible job. No regrets. Wouldn't do anything any different. Now, we'll end up with a universal booster at room temperature, maybe the best booster.
If the governments decide that they want to give everybody a fourth shot in the fall, September, October, because there will be another wave, we don't know what size, we'll be well-placed. We're the only vaccine to be tested on top of everybody else's vaccine. A very high immune response. We can be shipped at room temperature. We can do many things that can't be done, and we'll play our part. The European governments have ordered 75 million doses of our vaccine. It's not about money. It's about playing our part. You can be frustrated like I was emotionally that we didn't deliver. Don't for a second believe that our people didn't give their very best.
On this digital strategy?
I think it's another good challenge, frankly, on digital. We're a company of 300 acquisitions over three decades. We worked very hard to go from 250 data lakes to two or three. We worked very hard to try and make sure that our data and our ability to understand our data and to run R&D and commercial and simplify the company is moving at a high speed. We upgraded the department. We brought in real superstars to do this work. They are surprised by the amount of work that needs to be done but excited about the opportunities that lie ahead. The bad news is I think we're a little bit behind where we started. The good news is pharmaceuticals is way behind everybody else.
For us, we're able to catch up on pharma very fast. Some of the bold shots, whether it's Future4Care, whether it's our own innovation accelerator here in Paris, whether it's our work in Barcelona, we're jumping straight ahead and wasting no time, both from a digital health perspective, from a research perspective, and from a drug development perspective. Major collaborations, no hesitation, jump to the front. Some risk, but feeling very good about the progress made. We're closing the gap on the industry. We'll be ahead of the industry. Can we learn from the best practice? When I look at how much the board pushes me, for example, you know, I'm challenged by one of the world's leading, you know, companies in L'Oréal who know it better than anybody else.
Don't think for a second that I'm not asked very direct questions about the progress made and the opportunities that lie ahead of us. It happens continuously from the board. You know, that's the job of governance, and that's the job of keeping the pressure on management. I feel the urgency for us to jump to the front.
Other question? Five.
Next question, that will be sign number five.
Hello, my name is Roger Tran. I have been a permanent fixture of AGMs, and I've been whispering to the ears of CEOs for years and years and years. I have a couple of questions. I would like to know about this Sanofi's vaccine. I mean, maybe it's coming rather late in the day, but still, I believe that in November 2020, Moderna sold EUR 22 billion worth of vaccine, and Pfizer something like EUR 55 billion worth of their vaccines now. Is it the case that Sanofi's vaccine is compatible with that fourth injection for the elderly? That's my first question about the fourth injection.
I'm sure there are some countries that would be happy to purchase that. At Sanofi, you may be somewhat disappointed with the sales of Dupixent, but has there been a slowdown? What's the problem with Dupixent? Regarding the startups, are there startups that you propose to acquire shortly?
Thank you. If you want to give a chance to as many of our shareholders to put questions, maybe let's leave it to just one question per person, because now it's like three questions at a go. I mean, I can stay here all night, but I think it would be more congenial for all shareholders to stick to a limited number of questions, maybe from now on.
Now then, regarding the vaccine, I think, we've pretty much answered the question regarding the startups that you might want to acquire.
Just to finish off, 'cause I should have mentioned it earlier. You know, it is now obvious that mRNA can move faster than conventional platforms, which is why I think Serge mentioned we double down, we'll become the world leader. You may say it's easy for me to say. It's not easy for me to say. A huge amount of work, proven by the fact that in influenza, while Pfizer and Moderna were ahead of us, we're now level with a better plan and likely to be the winner in flu. Don't underestimate us in mRNA. Your point about can we be used on top of the other mRNAs, if you're asking personally, you have to ask your physician for your own choice.
For me, we've studied it as universal booster on top of all of the other platforms, and the data is outstanding and has been shared. You know, you can find that online. If you're offered it, then you'll be safe to take it. In terms of Dupixent sales, there was a suggestion that we're disappointed. We're not disappointed at all, and please forgive me if I gave that tone. We will never be happy. They're different things. We have a huge ambition, and let me tell you why. It's not the numbers. It's not the sales numbers, while they'll be impressive. What drives that sales number for last year represented only 8% of the patients that are suffering that should qualify for a medicine like Dupixent to return their life to normal.
Which means 92% of patients that are sick should be getting access to our medicine or any medicine. We happen to have the best one. Focus for a moment on what it means for them, that we're not disappointed in our performance, but we're ambitious on behalf of the patients that are yet to be treated. In terms of startups, yes, we are planning to work and acquire more startups. We can't share the names for obvious reasons, because that would be inappropriate. Our desire to learn from and work with and create a culture in Sanofi where a startup of six, seven, eight people can help share how they work, and that we can incubate ideas together, and that we don't suffocate them like big companies do, but we provide real opportunity for them to help reverse engineer how we operate.
That's the magic right across the spectrum, and I think we're delivering on that. Very excited about how we're doing that. In some areas, like financial use of AI in finance, in product quality, soon to be HR and other areas, we're pioneering. That, those specific examples come from very small, humble startups. We are open to learn and humble enough ourselves to be doing that.
Let me just add that, our vision of the vaccine is somewhat different from that of our competitors, American competitors, because, well, the price, I won't get into the detail of that. But the price of Sanofi's vaccine should be less than half the price of the American equivalent. We're not, we haven't got at all the same approach to public health. For us, it's not so much of generating huge revenue. Our concern is to provide solutions. We don't propose to exploit a, well, very temporary monopoly because as you can see for yourself, just because at one point, one company made a mint with one blockbuster, this doesn't mean that that company's market value increased that much or significant.
Maybe they generate more revenue, can do something with the money. By and large, we did not work on that assumption. Our premise is to provide the best possible solution in terms of public health.
Are there further questions? I see none. Number eight. Really?
Good afternoon, gentlemen. I would like to bounce back on what Monsieur Soulan said about the tax treatment of EUROAPI, because there was a recent acquisition. I would like to know what's the tax status of the API. Is it the same tax treatment for foreign investors and for French investors? Have you been talking with the Ministry of Finance on that?
I believe that there's a journalist of the financial media, and they may wish to put the question as well. Well, sir, I'm not quite sure what you mean. Let me just reiterate what I said about the tax treatment of individual shareholders. All individual shareholders, regardless, will have to pay this withholding tax upon receiving that dividend. The 30% tax which combines income tax and social security contributions, the amount to be withheld will or might actually be covered by the sale of shares. So you if you have enough shares, you won't find yourself in the red in any case. If it might.
Regarding the BPI, the French investment bank, Banque Publique d'Investissement, there was a question about that. Sorry, we didn't hear. The reason why it invests, well, it invests because it believes it finds good opportunities. If they invest in our company, it's because they think we are worth their while. They didn't just sort of, I mean, we had no demands. We said, "Well, here's a strategic company that is just being IPO'd." And there are number of investors, institutional investors and others that have shown an interest. Well, you can imagine that individual shareholders might wish to sell their shares, and that might bring the share price down a little bit.
that movement would be rather limited because there are many investors waiting for the listing of that company to buy shares.
Anyway, is there another question? Sign number five.
My name is Frédéric Farouge. I am an employee. Right now, my contract has been suspended, but I would like how. I mean, a project was announced, then pulled, and then abandoned. When a project is made and the commitment, financial commitment is made, is it possible for employees to check up on that? As an employee, I found that, well, there were few women at the higher level of the company. When will we have more women in executive positions in the job?
Regarding internal promotions, if I look at the Executive committee, I find that people have little seniority in the company. If somebody proposes to have a career in the company, do they have any hopes to make it all the way up to the Comex? Then, a final point, there was an announcement in the media about an agreement with McLaren Racing, but they are only producing ICE engines, and we have this program to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. McLaren Racing has no women in their leadership team, and they only have one driver, and she was the person in charge of sustainable development in 2022. Anyway, is it really an appropriate choice to go with McLaren Racing, especially in view of our CSR commitments?
Well, thank you. Regarding well, our investments and projects at the Audit committee or indeed the Strategic committee, when it comes to an acquisition, there's always an analysis of return on investment of acquisitions. Well, usually that's several years down the road because you usually when you buy a company, it has a pipeline of research, and so there's no point in having a sort of shortsighted analysis. We well, we always look on our projects, see whether they were successful or not. On the three other questions, maybe Paul can address, but I would like to emphasize here that the
Well, this concern about gender parity is number one. Gender parity in terms of equal wages, we've been working on that for some time, and now we do have satisfactory results. In fact, if you look at the rating that we have, we're doing fine. Also you're talking about having more power, more women in executive positions. There again has been a major concern, and maybe I'm sure Paul can say more about that.
There's clearly an overlap between the questions. They're interesting because there's a determination to understand about gender equality and opportunity from a career progression perspective, and I get it. You know, as a company, we're more than 50% female. At the senior levels, we are approximately 30% female, and we've made huge progress on that already. Now, it's very easy to say, "Well, why don't you just appoint more females?" And you can do that, and there are occasions where that works quickly. There's a more fundamental issue that we're addressing over a few years of underdevelopment and not giving the right opportunities for some of our female leaders to grow. What do I mean?
We need to make sure that all of our leaders, regardless of gender, have the opportunity to collect all of the experiences and skills to go up to the Executive Committee to compete and to perform on behalf of the company. Now, what has happened in the past, we've not had the opportunity to fully develop all of our female leaders. It's just a fact. Now we've been able to accelerate some, but not all. We've been sorting that out over the last couple of years and giving stretch assignments. You know, we have three females running Europe. We had at one point five females running the different divisions in the U.S.
We do it because once we put our candidates in front, our diverse candidate slate in front of a diverse panel, we're creating an ecosystem where we're more likely to choose a candidate that represents society at a more senior level. We have to build for the long term. Improving the gender inequality and redressing the balance is a long-term commitment, a huge commitment over a number of years. We brought in a external counsel, not to do our work for us, but to keep us honest on that journey and to say, "Are you inclusive with disabilities? Are you equally inclusive with sexual orientation? Are you unequally inclusive with ethnicity?" We're on that journey, and we've been very public about the fact that we're holding ourselves to a very high standard.
My own discovery when I joined the company, even at the senior levels, regardless of gender, we had not had an opportunity to develop people for the Executive Committee. We took the opportunity to bring what we consider to be the very best people for this turn of promotions. The job for us is to make sure the succession and our Chief People Officer, myself, and the Nominations Committee spend a lot of time looking at who's coming up next to make sure that we have a diverse person that is ready to take an Executive Committee's place internally. You can't do that overnight, so what you should look for from us is progress. That's what we can commit to doing the right things in the right way.
As for McLaren, firstly, on most of the innovation, as you're probably aware, if you study it, that comes from whether it's anti-lock braking or returning power to a battery under braking, come from Formula One motorsport. That's where they were born. Those initiatives, which in the end give back to society, are very, very important. It's not as simple as a combustion engine challenge, number one. Number two, the electric racing is now becoming a very viable part of the calendar. Why racing at all? Because we wanted to take a company with an engineering DNA to work with the engineers in our manufacturing. We wanted engineers to set a high standard for engineers. What we didn't want was to bring in management consultants to hold a stopwatch at the end of a manufacturing line.
We wanted people that understood about asset utilization and how to outperform and how to reduce the weight of a package of tablets by 61 grams by reducing the amount of aluminum, which is better for the environment. These marginal gains come from elite sport. We're on the way to those things. It is, of course, you know, you can look, of course, at the announcements and see what you see. But I can assure you that everything that goes on behind to substantiate our choices is deeply rooted in having us to be an eco-friendly, inclusive, and representative organization. We won't simply stop until that's the case. It may never stop, but it's the right work to do. Right. A final question then.
One last question. Is there a last question? Yes. Go ahead, sir.
Mr. Chairman, my first reaction will be very simple. I notice that you have become a normal man, if I compare to what you were before COVID, with an attitude of kind of despicable towards shareholders. So I think you've changed, and I think there's been a dialogue between the staff and the shareholders, and that is a very good point. I'm not going to dwell on the first question regarding the salary, because regarding salaries, as I've learned some time ago, a CFO and a CEO are people who have no price, since they know how to bring something significant to the company.
Seize an opportunity, a niche to raise funds and interesting conditions, well, those are skills that a CEO or a CFO only has and deserves a premium for that. That person who can invent something, create something, generate a formidable innovation like this Dupixent drug, if, of course, there are no side effects, and that remains to be checked in the future. If it is really a miracle drug, of course, that is worth a lot of money. I wouldn't be jealous of the person who is going to take those gratifications. The important thing is to have serious contributions for all of us and for the company, and for all of us, consequently. I think that is the criterion, the basic criterion to talk about compensation and salaries of leaders.
That being said, I think you said it. I don't want to seem arrogant, as you said I was before the pandemic. What is your question? Let me get to it. So you said, if I understood you correctly, you have recognized that we were not ready when COVID arrived. What bothers me is that COVID is something we became aware of in the fall of 2019 already. If a company like yours that is related to Pasteur, how come you were not able to apprehend the situation in the fall of 2019? Maybe that is that the company was not well-managed at the time. You implicitly recognized it. Those people were paid very high money when they arrived and when they left.
As I said, I'm not jealous of those who obtain salaries, high salaries, high remuneration. The important thing is to be successful, to succeed. In the past, we have paid a lot of money for people who didn't do much for the company. That's my point. Of course, we can talk about the management in that manner is unjust. The remuneration are theoretical. We have a series of criteria that is such that it's all determined by objectives. It's not annual gifts that we make to people because in the morning, you got up optimistic. It's all related to performance conditions that are quite strict over a three-year period. By the way, we have given you a presentation about that that's detailed line by line. Even more precisely, there was no point in really going into the details.
The roadmaps are demanding roadmaps, so there's no free lunch. There's nobody who is taking on too much money. There are people who work hard and people who have been able to transform the company in a very significant manner. This is why we have decided to make those changes today. I cannot agree with the words you've used. I think they're totally inappropriate, and I really hope that in this room, we have a minimum of respect for the management and the board as we deeply respect each of you. On that question, we're now going to move to the votes on resolutions, and I give the floor to Philippe Peyre.
I have presented the final form. We're now going to tell you how this electronic vote works. We're going to re-explain to you how it works with little movie.
How is it that you should use this voting device? Dear shareholders, your voting device is strictly personal. The number of votes you have or represent is already in the device, and it is displayed on the screen. You only have to use the green, yellow, and red keys. Green is if you want to vote for. Yellow is for abstention. The red is if you want to vote against the resolution. After each resolution has been read, we will immediately vote on it, and we will say the vote is open. At that moment, you will see a rectangle on the screen indicating to you the countdown, the number of seconds you have to vote. When the countdown is over, we will say the vote is closed, and then you will no longer be able to vote.
The display of results will appear a few seconds after on the screen. Thank you for turning off your telephone during the vote, and please give back the voting devices when you leave the room. First resolution, approval of the individual company financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020. The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is approved. Second, approval of the consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2020. The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is carried forward. Third, appropriation of results for the year ended December 31, 2020, and declaration of the dividend. Let's vote. The vote is now over. The resolution is carried forward. Fourth, renewal of the mandate for Paul Hudson. The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is adopted.
Christophe Babule, the vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is adopted. Sixth resolution, renewal of Patrick Kron's mandate as a director. The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is adopted. Seventh resolution, renewal of Gilles Schnepp's mandate as a director. The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is adopted. Eighth resolution, nomination of Carole Ferrand as a director. The vote is open. The vote is now closed. The resolution is approved. Ninth resolution, nomination of Emile Voest as a director. The vote is open. The vote is now over. Resolution is adopted. 10th resolution, nomination of Antoine Yver, appointment as director on the board. The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is approved. 11th resolution, approval of the report on compensation for corporate officers.
The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is adopted. 12th resolution, approval of compensation of Serge Weinberg, president of the board of directors for 2021. The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is adopted. 13th resolution, approval of compensation elements paid during or for the fiscal period ended December 31, 2021 to Paul Hudson, CEO. The vote is open. The vote is over. The resolution is adopted. 14th resolution. Approval of the director's compensation policy. The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is adopted. 15th, the approval of the compensation policy for the chairman of the board of directors. The vote is open. The vote is now closed. The resolution is adopted. 16th, approval of the compensation policy for the CEO.
The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is adopted. 17th resolution, authorization to be given to the board in order to act on the company's share outside of the period of public offerings. Vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is adopted. For the extraordinary part, 18th resolution, change to Article 25 of the bylaws relating to dividends. The vote is open. The vote is now over. The resolution is adopted. Last resolution, 19th resolution, proxy for the accomplishment of formalities. The vote is open. The vote is now over and the resolution is approved. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for having come today and for being so faithful. Our general meeting is over, and I'd like to meet you next year on May 4, 2023. Thank you.