Hello. Ladies and gentlemen, shareholders are the General Meeting, Annual General Meeting open as published in the Balos in 6 March 1st April 2020 and in the special journal of companies of 4th April 2020 due to health circumstances within the framework prescribed by the order of 25th March 2020, dampening the rules of meetings, This meeting will be since entitled to attend. It is broadcast live on the company's website. In accordance with the provisions of our because 'nineteen of the articles of association, the vice chairman may chair the meeting. It is in this capacity that I chair this meeting.
Jean Pascal Tricoire, Chairman of Board of Directors, takes part, will be taking part in video conference. Next to me is Emmanuel Babylon, Deputy Managing Director in Charge Finance And Legal Affairs and Derfin Ejuy, Secretary of the Board of Directors. I call on our function Scrutinears Emmanuel Babble, shareholder, and Elena Perlier, representative of the employee shareholder fund, Schneider appointed by the Fund's Supervisory Board, and I invite Defincio to act as secretary Mr. Louis Valaire for on behalf the board of statutory auditors will inform you of the conclusions of their audit. The formal required for the holding of this meeting is at least 1 quarter of the shares comprising the share capital with voting rights.
I e, 137,431,000 856. As from the 18th resolution to the 21st resolution, the resolutions fall within the jurisdiction of an extraordinary general meeting I remind you that 4 resolutions that fall within the jurisdiction of the ordinary general meeting, the quorum is 1 5th of the shares making up the share capital with voting rights. According to the attendance sheet, I know that at the opening of the meeting, a number of shares and are all effectively represented is 1,000,000 mid 1683. So a quorum of 66.38 percent, the legal quorum to hold a combined shareholders meeting is, therefore, reach. I would point out that there are 1000000,670,400,005 135 votes, fire correspondence and for a meet, meeting in a camera.
This call is definitive. The members of the board will certify the 10th sheet by signing it and a declare that the meeting has been duly constituted and that it can deliberate in all validity. So the main items on the agenda of this meeting are as follows: approval of the financial statements and determination of the amount distribution of US2.55 dollars per share approval of the special report of the statutory auditors on a new regulated agreement relating to the conditions of departure of the Deputy Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Emmanuel. Approval of the elements of compensation of executive directors paid or allocated during financial 2019 approval of the compensation policy for the Chairman And Chief Executive Officer, approval of the compensation policy, specifically applicable to Mr.
Emmanuel Papault, Deputy Chief Executive Officer in connection with his departure and of the compensation components paid or allocated during the financial year 2020. Renewal of the terms of officers, Mrs. Cecile Cabanese, Mr. Fred Kindle, Mr. Willie Kinstling, and myself, appointment of Ms.
Julie as new director, approval of the remuneration of the members of the Board of Directors statutory amendments to comply with that amended laws and rectification of material error and renewal of financial authorizations, capital increases reserved for employees for their savings or long term compensation in shares. So on the table is a copy of the articles of associate a copy of the notice meeting and documents sent to all registered chair, which is a copy of the Balow of 6 March 1st April 2020, end of 1st. Johannes Specialty Societe at 4th April 2020, the list of registered shareholders. The attendance sheet and table summarization of the proxies of the shareholders represented and accounting of postal ballots and the reports, including the management report on the Board of Directors, the Report of Directors on Corporate Governance, which is the subject of specific section of the management report and the report of the Board of Directors to the General Meeting of Shareholders. The accounts for the year, statutory auditors' reports.
And as I pointed out, and here are all the documents. I'm not going to let them because they were very weighted. As I've already pointed out, Mr. Fred Kendall will 600,000,000 as Vice President And Independent Lead Director I missed a page, and I beg your pardon. The text and resolution presented to the mean shareholders and different documents.
And I would point out that, the reports and financial statements as well as the text of resolutions that of shareholders and in general, all the documents covered by the regulations in force have been made available to the shareholders in accordance with the legal terms of deadlines. The main elements our strategy as well as the reports on the financial statements will be presented by Jean Pascal Tricoire. Then Emmanuel Papo, I will present a corporate governance and the resolution submitted to the shareholders vote. And now I will hand the floor to Jean Pascal Tricoire. Hello, everybody, and welcome to this 2020 Annual General Meeting.
At General Meeting, the Boobie special first of all, because we are conducting this digitally, and it's going to give you a pretty good idea as to how we work at Schneider Electric, because as you know, and we are present in many countries. And when we work together at Schneider, it is especially via video conferencing. The second special aspect of this meeting is to transition from our financial but from Emmanuel Babaugh to Hillary Maxwell. I will present our new CFO with Emmanuel. And I would like to thank Emmanuel the 11 years we've spent together building a Schneider that is a different company that's a transformed company.
And much better equipped to face up to the future. And third element is the vote that we are going to propose to you to trans do the transition from Leo Batica to Fred Kindle as lead director, independent lead director. I'd like to thank Leo who did the introduction to this meeting of all the excellent work we can conduct together to ensure, best possible governance at Schneider, and to deploy the strategy that the COMEX has set up. So we'll start by wishing each one of you good health and that we should help one another to go through this, crisis. Come out of this crisis altogether.
I'm going to talk about the strategy group, and I'm going to explain what the raiseled debt of Schneider Electric is. That is to do the best with the energy we have for all at every moment of day and to ensure through the Schneider Technologies that life should go on better. This period that we are weathering right now reminds us to what extent Schneider is necessary in all the processes and all the applications that are critical, for our day to day lives. We serve customers have, critical missions for life. Hospitals are we are one of the main suppliers for hospitals the cold chain for agribusiness.
Most of the data centers for different internet sites and the houses, homes, buildings, and offices, and the water distribution network. AR technologies are extremely useful to increase the safety of the operators and reduce risk through remote control systems through digital systems that make it possible to advise people of our operating in the field without exposing them to unnecessary risks. All these digital technologies help the operators, to operate in maximum security conditions, safety conditions. Our mission is to develop digital solutions for sustainable development by combining energy and automation to reach a higher level of efficiency And to better illustrate this, we do it this in 3 different ways. The first way is to be adviser and the partner to support our customers in the transition towards sustainable development with 70% power turnovers based on technologies that serve sustainable development.
That's what we call the green revenue, and we accompany companies like Maple Leaf in Canada, accrual in France, in agribusiness in their research to reduce carbon footprint and to ensure better energy efficiency. And all of this is taking place at a time, but there's a fundamental shift in societies and companies and in cities towards more sustainable development, more than 200 large companies across 100 countries have pledged in the next the last 6 months to, head for the 1.5 degrees trajectory, take the example of legal in Finland that by using a micro electric grid based on renewable energies at our energy efficiency based on digital technologies. It's going to 5 100 percent renewable energy for its operations and produce its carbon emissions by 40%. Our second contribution is innovate for more sustainable well. In 2019, we started a new range in a medium voltage, medium voltage, which is the interface between the electrical grid and applications and generally used a gas that is toxic SF6 gas today, our engineers have developed a revolutionary product, which is called R7, which doesn't use any book SF 6 and doesn't use any gas at all and does insulation and braking.
Functions. And we have it, Shneur, developed a whole series of products that we call green premium that comply with all the regulatory requirements for sustainable development. These products represent more than half of the sales with our group and are growing above average. Our 3rd commitment is to ensure that Schneider is exemplary in reducing its carbon footprint and we have taken 3 commitments that of carbon neutral neutrality in 2025, no, I guess, end of a 6 net 0 operational emissions by 2030, net 0 supply chain by 2050. And it is this commitment for sustainable development that we've been, doing for the last 15 years, and this has led us to being a pioneer this area.
In 2019, we were recognized by a number of agencies as being exemplary in this development towards sustainable development. Now what Schneider has done is much more than just applied technologies is to imagine to invent, innovate with the customers of future that will be fundamentally different. A building of the future that will be 100 percent digital, all electric, sustainable autonomous in terms of energy, but also in decision making stores to auto optimize comfort and the use of the building. Same thing in industry, we are developing systems that make for industry future to be a 100 percent digital all electric and sustainable and more and more autonomous whether it be in local generation of energy, decision making in terms of processes and energy consumption, what we have done during the last 15 years that have just gone by is that we have become the partner for sustainable development for our customers by proposing a level of efficiency much much higher than, the technology of our competitors can offer. Thanks to level of integration, which is much higher.
We call this integration integration multiplied by 4. The first integration is that of energy and automation that we've talked about and that you can see in the system that we've developed with Field now, which is an integrated supplier of solutions in the region of Mexico for water distribution works to reduce greatly the carbon impact of water installations on China, which is a leader in agribusiness business, we pound gains into operational efficiency and gains in the consumption of energy. The second integration that is complimentary to the first is the 1 of EcoStruxure. Which brings together connected products to control systems at the local level in industrial plants for the machines and buildings and a whole series of software applications to improve operational management of installations. We have EcoStruxure structure is ten years old.
It is the plug and playing its system for the digitalization of Schneider Electric on one of the things this is what we've done with BASF in the United States. We have complete transparency, all the connected objects and connection to predictive maintenance systems makes it possible to stop production, to stop production stoppages and to work on all the maintenance, 3rd integration work that I've been with. AVEVA has been this life cycle, 1 or around a unique digital twin make it possible for our customers to have and to think progress according to the same digital model from the design all the way to the commissioning of an installation and towards operation and maintenance of operations and any losses that might take place during the transition from a model or a design from the design phase to the operational phase. One example that one can take in this area is what we do with Filmar, that's the leader in sugar production in Australia, Australia and software works directly with the optimization of the plant in real time but the use of digital twin has made it possible to reduce by 20% the building of the plant. And the 4th integration, it enables us to provide to our customers no longer the possibility of no longer managing their company plant by plant or building by building a machine dimension, but to connect all of their enterprise with a single digital system, which will enable them optimize all of their consumption, all of their processes, and to compare each of the installations they have in company and to better procure their energy and energy, which were much greater and much cheaper.
These are the 4 elements of integration. These 4 elements which will solve the problem of our customer to integrate all the clicks. They have been modern technologies to provide more efficiency to no longer. This can only be deployed thanks to the Schneider Electric model, which is different in that its integrated multi local part integrated multilocal open and empowered. We are integrated because we've had one Schneider developed over the last 12 years.
We've developed Schneider Round's strong countries, with, country managers that are in charge of a Schneider presidency to give them geography and based on a process and a supply chain, logistics and production integrated and integrated functions are made at possible lies all of our processes. So during a crisis period such as when we're experiencing today, was particularly important because our organization has been tested. It's operational up for more than 12 years. And these processes are digitalized, which means that we're very resilient, very proactive and much, a greater transparency. Another strong point during this crisis bid is our multi hub, multi local organization We've organized ourselves in a multigal agreement where we compare revenue to the percentage of our headcount and percentage of our cost in production.
We are different from the competition because we are very, very close to our final markets. And all of this enables us to adapt in many ways, adapt to electric standards, norms, compliment by compliment, as standards differ greatly from one continent to next. This enables us also to adapt to different digital standards in the different regions. The American standard is very different from the Chinese standard. And this enables us, of course, to serve more effectively and more quickly, more personalize our customers at a time when our customers want systems that are bespoke, and they want these systems very quickly.
And it is the only way for us to reduce our carbon footprint because this very short supply chain makes it possible to, limit, reduce carbon emissions. And of course, during this period, with a major health crisis where frontiers are being closed. Countries are isolating 1 another. This makes us able to reacting at a local level and to be much more resilient and reactive to face up to the problems of the virus in the different countries.
All this goes with another model, which is extremely decentralized, where the responsibility and the means are given or entrusted to our local teams, allowing them to respond very quickly, knowing what they know best which is their own environment, the country in which they operate. The development of this principle, this decentralized principle that we've been developing throughout the years is particularly helpful today with this multi local principle to respond to the crisis that we have. Now another very important part of our model is the partnership concept No other company works with more partners than Schneider Electric, upstream with our suppliers downstream with our integrators, installers and panel manufacturers. And our partners in technology with whom we develop systems. In 2019, we launched a digital site allowing the whole ecosystem to work together naturally digitally.
This site is now named exchange, and it is clearly successful. On the basis of this resonderc, this purpose that make so much sense today in our environment. Based on this mission and on the different models, we mean to overcome the COVID 19 crisis. 1st of all, This crisis emerged at the end of 2019, which was a record year for Schneider Electric. We had very strong fundamentals, a clear strategy, a well proven, strategic model and a sound financial situation Our system, which has been multilocal decentralized and operational organizational model, allow us to be present in all the countries and respond to the situations in each country.
They vary enormously from one country into another. China, for example, is leaving the crisis when other countries at are at the beginning of it in Europe is right in the middle. What is more important than everything is the health our workers and the communities in which operation with the local authorities in the countries where we operate and we have 3 priorities. Number 1, Social distancing measures, personal protection equipment, home working, digital tools and support, and also global benefit standards with life health and family care, particularly for the most fragile family. And beside what we do within the societies in the area of health, there are also utions we provide to the hospitals and health organizations in all our countries.
We are one of the biggest provider of energy control systems in the hospitals all over the world. And our teams are working daily in these hospitals to help them continue to operate and support them in this stressful condition that was absolutely unprecedented. We have 4 main priorities. The first one is our responsibility to serve the companies, the local authorities, the health authorities around us, all the entities that are fighting back the crisis. This is why we continue working.
Our service teams are out there in the field and we continue to be extremely operational. The second responsibility is adapting Schneider to the conditions of the crisis. We have to adapt The 3rd priority is to prepare the aftermath of this crisis. Of course, we will come out of this crisis. We have to prepare to leave the confinement as we did in some countries.
Prepare our business, which will be highly demanded after a crisis. And the 4th priority is our responsibility the VR environment and the communities in which we work throughout the world. Therefore, we created a dedicated fund called Cora Rising to help the communities respond to the crisis. Improve the resilience of the communities around us so that in the future we can all respond better to such crisis. Of course, you heard about the Schneider Electric participation to the making of respirators in France, in the UK, the United States, sorry, and in India, and also the 3 d face shields.
We use the fundamentals that we developed in the past 15 years. A strong and diversified geographic presence. We are multi local for our employees. We want our employees to be closer to the market in order to respond in a well adapted way to the local features of this crisis. A portfolio of activities that is rebalanced to avoid the cycle effect more developments in digital and services.
It is now double of what it was 10 years ago and the cost base, as I said before, which is based on partners, which makes us even more flexible. A double cash flow in 2019 compared to 2018. We have more capacity to overcome the crisis. And what also helps us is that we are Wein Schneider, an integrated model for over 12 years. Multilocal since more than 5 years.
I started operating on that. And finally, the development of our digital and services activities. These activities are much more resilient. They can they're able to continue activities in times of crisis and we are ready for the world after the crisis, a world where the digital demand will be stronger where everybody will structure when it will be harder to travel a world that will be aware of the power of nature wanting to rebound or to help improve the situation against climate change, the research of Circularity and life cycle services, and recovery plans. It's a world where many key markets, which are the strong markets of Schneider will want more technology, particularly hospitals and When we enter this crisis, we just finished 2019, which was a record year Thanks to the execution of our strategy.
A few numbers, our revenues was beyond 1,000,000,000 with an adjusted, EBITDA of almost +9 percent almost 1,000,000,000 and adjusted net income of 1,000,000,000, up 14% and a free cash flow, as we said before, is over 1,000,000,000, and this is certainly the most striking characteristic of our financial year 2019. Thanks to the sound numbers, the sound financial situation, we can propose dividends of 2.55 per share. This is +8.5 percent. It will be voted at the shareholders meeting. And the total shareholder return, it was 60% in 2019 only, ranking number 1 among direct peers.
2 activities, Energy Management And Industrial Automation contributed to these record results. Both activities are growing Both activities have a sectorial profitability of over 18%, which allow us to really welcome those results, which are better than what we ever had before. We will continue to implement the strategy we described in the past few years, more products, more services, more software and better systems that are more profitable. These four catalysts of Schneider results are absolutely up and running in 2019. And I would like to remind you that this combination between digital which is software and control and services represent 25 percent of the financial year 2019 revenues.
This is a higher growth than the average of the group. We have a better margin. It is also a leverage of growth for connected products, which are not included in those 25%. If you introduce also the connected products, we have almost 50% of the revenues. So 50% of our revenues are in digital and services.
And what we do in those two businesses allow us to build our customer intimacy. Here are numerous examples of, EcoStruxure as we developed in 2019 with as in all the geographies and in our 4 main markets, buildings, data centers, infrastructure and industry. Finally, if we look at this with some distance, if we look at the results over a larger number of years, well, in the past 3 years, we committed with organic revenue, with a plus 3%, we ended with 5%, which is much better than the initial objective 2. Our organic adjusted EBITDA is growing over 70 basis points each year, which is much better than the 20 basis points we committed to. And the organic growth adjusted EBITDA is growing by 9 0.4%, which is more than the 4% to 7% we announced 3 years ago.
The basis of this 2019 year, which was a record year, great in performance, allow us to propose for a vote, a dividend, which is growing So for Schneider Electric, this is the result of 10 years of dividends progress. The shareholders trust you who were with us at each stage of our investments, our choices, our transformation, be it in difficult times or in more prosperous times. Now I would like to give the floor to Emmanuel Babu who is going to explain in detail this financial part. I would like to thank Emmanuel for everything we did together for this transformation we achieved, as I just described, this is something we did together in the past 11 years. I wish Emmanuel a great future carrier in the new company he's joining.
And again, all my acknowledgement for everything he did inch Schneider and everything we did together. Hillary Maxim will replace Emmanuel Babbo. She joined Schneider with a great experience in our industry, particularly the energy industry where she worked for many years. She was recruited in Hong Kong after a very international carrier in the United States, of course, since she is an American citizen, but also in America, Africa, Asia, South America. She was in charge of the Energy Division of Schneider Electric, the biggest So she's really up and ready to replace Emmanuel Babbo at the head of finance.
Thank you very much Emmanuel and it's to you. Dear shareholders, good afternoon. It's a great pleasure for me to meet with you and comment the results of this past year. As you will see on this video, we are particular circumstances. We were all impacted by this COVID-nineteen crisis.
So I will also explain what will happen in 2020, how this crisis is impacting us and how we can respond to these pandemics, how we can overcome this crisis in the best conditions. So let's have a look back to 2019 first of all. For our group, It is a successful year. And I think it is fair to say that 2019 was the illustration of the strength of our strategy, the quality of its implementation with records that were achieved on all the main financial parameters during this financial a few numbers for our company in 2019. First of all, the revenues, 1,000,000,000 It's a progression of 4.2% in comparable scope.
And you see that the 2 activities, the energy contribution. And industrial automation, which is the other revolution of our industry, those 2 activities are growing. If you look at energy, we get to 1,000,000,000 If we look at Industrial Automation, we're growing by 0.1% to reach 1,000,000,000. If you look now at the progression by geographical area of the revenue during 2019, you see that all the main regions are progressing. The most notable was North America with 6% growth in comparable scope with an excellent performance.
The other major region of growth is Asia Pacific where China is a great zone of growth disappointing in 2019. We are also progressing in Western Europe, another big region for us with a growth of 2%. All the large countries are progressing in this zone. Rest of the world could grow here 4% in comparable years And we have contrasted performance here. You have Russia on one side with South America and Africa which had a good performance, but it was more difficult and challenging in Middle East.
Let's now turn to our 2 main activities. Energy management first. This activity helped us make 1,000,000,000 with a progression of 5.2% in organic growth. And you have the operational margin, the adjusted EBITDA margin, which is 18.4%. This is to say up 80 basis points.
If you look at all the regional, all the regions. The most spectacular was North America with an 8% progression. In the U. S, we speak of a 2 digit growth double digit growth. Asia Pacific was also very dynamic with +5 percent.
And then you have Western Europe and rest of the world, up 3%. Let's now look at the other activity, industrial automation, with 1,000,000,000, the operational or EBIT margin is also growing by one basis point. And you have areas for growth, rest of the world with 8% and Asia Pacific progressing by cent. And we have 2 other areas, which are more challenging North America -2, and Western Europe minus 1%. It is important to remember that all the discrete automation that is for the car industry, electronics, all these activities were under pressure in 2019 after 2
years of crores linked to our strategy and also due to the quality in the deployment strategy. And that's crucial because we have set very clear objectives for us to carry out our strategy. And in 20 18, we achieved this with a great deal of success. First objective was to sell more products, a more connected product some to our clients, and we have a growth of 3% in this area, whereas the economic cycle or can contact was not favorable. Over the long term, we want to develop massively services, which, enable us to be much closer to our customers, great customer intimacy and also to be able to perform better with a volatile economy power, 8% growth with software suppliers and we invest organically and inorganically, thanks to Avedo, we've had 2 double digit growth, and we continue to sell systems in projects so we combine products advise expertise or software to our customers.
So we want to do this in better condition with better margin. In 2019, we growth of revenue, thanks to these systems, but we've also grown margin linked to these activities with a pro gross progression of 40 basis points. Now the quality of deployment is no doubt due to improvement of our gross margin, not only 2019, but over the last 5 years. Gross margin is important because it reflects the added value that we provide to our customers. Are we able to provide innovation, different proposal and a lot of technological content.
The more we can do this, the more we'll increase our gross margin. And we have a spectacular increase in growth of margin from 37 percent in 2015, 39.5 percent 2019. And we intend to continue with this positive growth. This is enable us to generate more than 1,000,000,000 in margin and progression of 7% and we have also done excellent control of our costs and of our, capital deployment. We've reduced our costs and enabled us to increase our investments And when we look at the and all the reinvestments that we've carried out, we have growth of what we call our SFCs of 5% which is much lower than the faster than our costs and our investments.
So the result of this will enable us to have a better operating result with an adjusted EBITDA that is much, growing faster than our revenue. So we've gone 15.1to15 point 6%, which is a notable progression in our adjusted EBITDA margins. That's 1,000,000,000 1,000,000,000, it's a progression of roughly 10% in 2019. And you can see that this improvement of profitability is a lasting trend. It's been 5 years in a row that we've improved year on year, our operational margin EBITDA margin.
And we're going to continue to do this in coming years.
If we
look at the rest of the P and L. I'll draw your attention to two points. The first is on other income and expenses. See that we have manager, expenses, 1,000,000 in expenses. And these are expenses that are nonrecurring exceptional due to the divestment and other activities, for example, work to focus our portfolio on our priorities namely in 20 19.
We divested video surveillance activity at Palco generated a substantial loss of this will not recur in coming years. Of course, the second aspect I'd like to draw your attention to the financial net financial costs, we have new reduction, major reduction in 2019 at this cost. It was 1,000,000 compared to 1000000 expense of financial costs in 2018. So we're continuing to lower the cost of our debt by, through long term debt, subscribing to long term debt with a more interesting interest rates thanks to our solid financial results. So the net result group share is 2 1000000000 improved 3 percent, if we look at adjusted net income, if we take out the recurring losses, we have adjusted net income of 1,000,933,000,000.
That's plus 14% and you have adjusted earning per share is even higher. It's 5th plus 15 percent, 5.3 2. So you can say that in 2019, all the objectives that we had set in our governance have been reached or we have overreached them. We obtained our revenues of 3% to 5% In fact, we were the upper part of the bracket with 4.2%. We wanted to have the increase in the EBITDA margin of 50 basis points.
We did better, 70 basis points, and we wanted to increase our adjusted EBITDA by 4% between 4% to 7% on a like per like basis. We're at 8.7% progression and concerning our sustainability index. We wanted to attend 7 out of 10, and we are practically 8 over 10 in result. Of sustainability, Equinix. So what is important for us is not simply to perform well in 2019, but it is to ensure that this performance is lasting, but it's constant trend.
And if we look back over the last 3 years, at the end, of 2016, we had set ambitious objectives for 2017, 2000 through 2019. We have systematically overreached these targets. Revenues, we wanted an average of 3% and we were practically at 5% growth on a like for like basis. Now concerning our organic adjusted EBITDA, we will a growth between 20 and 50 basis points year on year, but we have achieved roughly 70 basis points on each of these periods. And we wanted to have organic growth for adjusted EBITDA, 4% to 7% on a yearly average, that we have easily attain 10% year on year.
So this result resulting from a strategy that is winning strategy and the quality of the deployment of the strategy, and this weapon shows us great consistency and regularity in the performance of the and the results it achieves. Now there's one figure in 2019, which is the most striking that clearly illustrates the trans information of your company, and that is the generation of free cash flow. We have generated billion free cash flow before the gains, thanks to IFRS 16, that's an accounting aspect that I won't detail. And that great increase of free cash flow. So how can we have such an acceleration of generation of free cash flow Well, it's very simple.
It's the result of progression over a number of years in our revenues. It's also a result the improvement year on year of our margin. I mentioned that also. This is also due to the fact that we are developing or evolving our activity towards a great quality value. We grow our activity.
We're using fewer industrial investments and with fewer less inventory and to reduce costs. And this has resulted in a strong acceleration of a capacity generated free cash flow. And this also means that end of 2019, we have a very solid financial the result, and we've never had such a solid balance sheet. And net debt over adjusted EBITDA is 0 point 7. And all this is accompanied by, a very, well controlled reduce of capital, for example, with, acquisitions, and we're going to have a also dividend payout, progressive dividend payout.
And going to all of this enables us to be very disciplined and to sure that we get value for our shareholders. So good net income results and increase of dividend per share at per share. That's an increase of 15%. And this will propose enable us to propose a growth in dividends. So we'll have a dividend of 2.5 5 Euros per share.
That is up by 8.5% And here again, we can talk about regularity when it comes to performance. If we look back 4 years, we had the growth of the dividend year by year, roughly 8%. We went from to from 2016, 2019, if we look over a 10 year period, we have multiplied to the dividend by 2.5 So this general shareholders meeting is special for me because it's my last shareholders meeting. And in a few days, I will leave Schneider Electric after having spent 11 years in this wonderful group. And I wanted to look back over the past years of work we've done with scale and the performance that we managed to achieve for you shareholders.
And on this graph here, you have what would have been your return on investment. If you had invested, 100 in July 2009 in the Schneidershire compared to the same investment in CAC40 shares. So 1,000,000 invested in 2009 is now worth 400, whereas 100 invested in track 40 companies at the same date is at roughly 200. So an investment in Schneider has generated 3 times more than investment in the CAC 40 over this 11 year period. If we look over the last 3 years, And we've shown here, the way the shares performed up to the just the eve of the COVID crisis.
And return for our shareholders, which was remarkable with a progression of 69% increase in value of share. So we are the best among all of our competitors all our peers over this period of 3 years. Now of course, you're going to say, okay, that was yesterday. And since 2019 financial year, we have been hit by the COVID-nineteen crisis, which has had an impact on all of us markedly. No one is exempt from this.
Everyone is impacted by this. For us, the most important thing is to reacting the best possible way to ensure that we'll be able to address the crisis and to whether it's in the best possible conditions and to prepare for the end of the crisis and what it's going to happened in the future. Now let's look at our major priorities to be able to weather this terrible situation of COVID 19. Their first priority is ensuring the health and safety of all our employees everywhere in the world. And take all of our employees to ensure that they have the right conditions to make sure they didn't incur any risk because we've got the right equipment, the BB and all the conditions with teleworking that ensure that we provide maximum safety for the second thing, and this is extremely important is to ensure business continuity and flexibility of our business activities.
We are essential thanks to our technology and what we provide to our customers to ensure the continuity of the lives of our societies and our lives, whether it's hospitals, data centers, everything that we contribute to in all the different industries and all the different business activities. We ensure continuity of service up there where it is critical which is necessary. And of course, we take into account this difficult and volatile context. And we're really focusing on financial solidity and our company is very robust, and we're really focusing on a generation of cash. And also lastly, of course, in these moments of uncertainty, we are really focusing on cost management to ensure that we maintain them as low as possible with efficiency plans and cost cutting measures where we can carry these out.
We have just published revenue for the first quarter. And I think we can clearly say this first quarter has been essentially impacted by China, because of COVID netting, you can see that our revenue, 1,000,000,000 is down on a like length basis of minus 6.4 percent. Management of Energy And Industrial Automation have been impacted in the same way, minus 6% energy management, minus 7.3% for automation, industry automation. When we look at the change by geographical area, you see it's essentially in Asia Pacific and China where we'll have the greatest decline minus 19.3% for the first quarter, essentially in China. Other two other areas are being already impacted, but to a lesser degree, and essentially in the month of March.
That was Western Europe And Rest of World with rough a minus 2% and North America, which is still in growth plus 0.6%. I I said the future is not to discount to not cancel the future. Is not going to be easy. It's going to be difficult, but it's important as from now on to prepare the for the world after a crisis. And you'll know very well, each crisis, provide a number of, obstacles tensions and problems to overcome, that in each crisis, there are opportunities to be a safe standpoint.
We clearly see is this crisis will have an impact on the global economy. It will have an impact on societies, and it will have an impact on our company, but going to accelerate. There's 2 major revolutions that we are dealing with, management of energy. And that's Energy Transition Revolution, the revolution of the industry of the future. And we must ensure that the acceleration of change We will support this, and we will benefit from it in the long term.
The digital economy is going to accelerate yet again, And we see this with teleworking in this crisis situation. We see also with the development of software and development of e Commerce and the importance of this digital economy. Where the data centers are backing it up and all the networks. We can see that there is a huge amount of resilience there will be necessary resilience in terms of distribution resilience to be able to, overcome up and problems to ensure critical services and hospitals and to provide essential services. And everyone clearly understands there's not a crisis that's going to stop investments in sustainable payment.
On the contrary, it's going to accelerate investments in this area, and we're going to accompany these investments. And we clearly see that all of these Our investment projects for the end of the crisis that are going to be significant, they're going to go in the directions that involve our technologies and our business activities. And we're going to company this resumption of the economy, which will be very favorable for us. Efficiency, sustainable there are 2 major values that we support and they're going to be even greater priorities in the future and going to help us to and we are preparing to, support those changes for the advancement of the company. Now in this crisis where continuing to work with our shareholders.
We want to make sure that we are close to them and more than ever dialogue with our different shareholders this is very important. And you know that the, it's armed the advisory committee of our shareholders. We work with them they meet with the management and, the shareholder advisory committee are there for you to ask questions, they provide excellent advice and answers to your questions, and we interactions, and we will continue, these interactions and physical meetings as soon it can be possible, but we're continuing virtually in the meantime. We'd like to thank you and to say how Schneider Electric is really committed to address all the challenges of this crisis and to be as resilient as possible. Thank you very much.
Thank you very much, Jean Pascal. You mentioned of these presentations aren't the situation and the perspectives prospects for the group before presenting to the Board's activities and to, to, report to you on my work by his Chairman, lead, EBITDA and Director. I'll hand back the floor to Jean Francois, who will present to you the members of the board of directors Thank you.
Thank you, Leo. This is the Board of Directors. You have 13 members, 13 directors representing the diversity of Schneider, 5 ladies and people coming from all over the world. The organizational chart you're going to see is also including Gino Z, who joined recently as a nonvoting director. She was already very active.
She's from Singapore. She works in Switzerland. And she had a whole carrier or big part of the care in our industry. So she knows our industry very well. And today, you will be invited to vote for her as a director.
We wish her welcome. She's bringing competence and diverse to our Board of Directors. Finally, as you know, Fred Kindle, will replace LEOA Potteker as, in the same position that is vice chairman of the board of directors and independent lead director. And given the particular circumstances of this shareholders meeting, Fred Kendall couldn't be with us, but he recorded a short video. So while we're doing this transition, I would like to thank Leo Apopeker.
He was a director during 12 years. He joined before the big financial crisis. And he supported Schneider's journey throughout. He was for 6 years, the Independent Lead Director of Schneider. And I think we never say how much the governance of a company is part of the success.
And the board of directors is absolutely key for governance. And Leo did a lot to make this governance progress. And beyond the rigorous operation of the board as he did it. And he assisted the executive to improve. He put all his knowledge and competence at the service of Schneider.
His knowledge of software and digital. And this is one of the main success of Schneider in the past few years It has a great sense of entrepreneurship. And I think that a company's 1st and foremost human adventure. And the way we work together, this cooperation, this partnership with a great human adventure. And the good news is that Leo will remain Director in Schneider and will continue to share his expertise with us that will with an exceptional knowledge of the group.
So thank you very much, Leo. And you have the floor for the rest of this meeting. Thank you, Jean Pascal. Thank you very much. In 2020, your board of directors will have 3 changes.
You will have a new director, Jill Lee. 2nd, director representing the employees, who will be appointed within 6 months and a new Vice Chairman, independent lead director. Why is it so important to have a new Vice Chairman, independent layer director? As you know, this status of Schneider Electric says that there has to be the appointment of Vice Chairman Lead Independents Director But as long as this charge is in one person, so Jean Pascal doing the 2 functions, The vice chairman lead independent director will guarantee the good governance of the company. As such, He chairs the committee of remuneration, and he also organizes the executive sessions and he meets with the will deliberate on this accumulation of functions and decided to continue in 2020.
The appointment of vice president or vice chairman is necessary, and it has to be among the independent directors. I joined the board 12 years ago and their seniority or loyalty makes me lose the quality of being an independent director in view of other law. So a new independently director has to be appointed And the board decided that this would be Fred Kindle, who accepted this position, as Jean Pascal just said, for obvious reasons, Fred couldn't come with us today, but he wanted to share with us all the vision he has for the company.
Question 1, would you please tell us about you and when and how you joined the Schneidus board? Madam, I missed your dear shareholders. Thank you for the opportunity to quickly introduce myself. My name is Fred Kindle and, apologize that I cannot address you in French. Unfortunately, I'm sorry about that.
So, our Swiss national and was born and raised in a tiny country called Liechtenstein, which is in between Switzerland and Austria. I started in Zurich, Switzerland, where I got a master's degree in engineering, worked for a couple of years, then decided to go to the United States where I got the masters in business administration. This was at the Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois. After that, I worked as a consultant with McKinsey in New York and Zurich And in 1992, a joint Swiss based mechanical engineering company, Solter, a company that produced pumps textile machinery, all sorts of mechanical equipment. And I became the CEO of this company in 1999 5 years later in 2004, I got the opportunity to become Group CEO of ABB in Zurich.
You probably know ABB as a direct competitor of Schneider Electric 4 years later, I left and became partner in an investment firm in London where I was involved full time until the end of 2015. And among several investments we made in this private equity firm called Clayton Du Million Rice. You may know Paris based Rexcel SR, which is actually a distributor of Schneider Electric Products. I was a director at Rexel for several years. Since 2016, however, I focus my work basically on, consulting a little bit and 3 board positions.
Including the indirectly as a competitor. And today, I can admit that there was always a, let's call it, competitive admiration for this company. Several years later, Sean Pascaltricoar asked me whether I will be interested in joining the SC board and the answer was very easy. I had no hesitation to say, yes, since Schneider Electric is a world leader in its industry, a high renowned company, and its leadership was also known to me and obviously I knew Jean Pascadriqua very much and really appreciated him as a colleague and a very competent professional and leader. So today, April 2020, I have been on the board for Schneider Electric for 4 years.
Question 2: How do you see your role and contribution as new Vice Chairman, Lead Independent Director of Schneider Electric? The role of the vice chairman and lead independent director is very important to make sure that top leadership and governance at Schneider Electric is effective. As you know, Schneider Electric is very lucky to have very competent leadership at the top of the organization. And I want to mention Sean Pascadrikoa by name, He has led Schneider elected to true success in the past years, and he has done this in the combined role of Chairman and CEO. This combined role works well in the current setup with the given persons.
Having this in mind, however, one task of the wise chairman lead independent director is to make sure we have a well balanced decision making process in the board where every board member has enough weight in the discussion. The vice chairman, lead independent director needs to make sure that an enormous power handed to the Chairman and CEO is embedded into a cohesive port where opinions are freely mentioned and the best decisions for the company are taken. And this is the case at Schneider Electric. Another important task is to serve as a speaking partner and confident for members of the executive management who report to the German CEO. They may have thoughts and concerns that need to be collected by someone and acted upon if necessary.
And similarly, an additional function is to liaise and meet with the main investors and shareholder representatives listen to the thoughts and present Nidelectrics concept as it concerns good corporate governance, environmental, societal and regulatory aspects last but not least, the Vice Chairman, Lead Independent Director needs to be a trusted, respected speaking partner for the Chairman Lead Independent Director. I think that's a key aspect of this role as well. And I can say I'm very thankful for the excellent work that has been done by my predecessor, Leo Apotek I can only hope that I can continue in this fashion and help Schneider Electric to remain as successful as it has been in the past years. Thank you very much. Question number 3: What do you consider as the key aspects of the role of a board?
The board of a company has several key functions. Let me start with the most important one from my perspective. The most important one from my perspective is to select the best people for running the company. In particular, of course, as it concerns the Chairman and CEO and the members of executive management. And then we need to support these people and the organization in general to maximize the success of the company.
And let me emphasize that success, of course, includes financial gain, but not only. Success 2 success is actually about the variety of different factors, financial gain, but also societal progress environmental benefits and much more. All the tasks of the board include aspects like installing good corporate governance processes, examining and approving the strategy of the company and monitoring the work the organization and operations. As I mentioned at the beginning, I could go on with many more, but these are the functions that stand out for me And if a port does all of this well, then we are in a good way. Let me just add that in especially challenging situations, such as we are experiencing today with a fallout from the coronavirus crisis, it is paramount that the board may sure that we as a company are setting the right priorities, which includes, of course, safeguarding the health and safety of our own people, employees, customers and suppliers.
I would like to thank the shareholders for the trust you put in me in the 6 years when I was the Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors And Independent Lead Director. I'm sure that this position will be efficiently taken over by Fred Kindle certainly better than me. At the end of this meeting, at this shareholders meeting, you will have 13 directors, 8 independent directors, 42% are women. And by the end, we will have another member in the board. You see here on this graph, geographical spread of the directors, which is perfectly suited to the needs of the group and its strategic priorities.
What are the activities of your board in 2019? As the law and the name says, it administers the company. The main activities can be shared in 4 categories in 2019, the Board of Directors of Schneider Electric worked on all the subjects except for the appointment of the leaders. The performance of the group the good, redistribution to shareholders and to allow the group to meet its objectives for the shareholders and all the stakeholders, we have established an ecosystem. We look at the possible opportunities and determine the strategic orientations of the group.
The monitoring of risk mapping and controlling risk management are also important functions of the Board of Directors as you could see in the mapping showed in the annual report. And on another topic that we will develop now, and other activities, the corporate governance. The board chooses the method of management, appoints and assesses co project executive officers determines executives' compensation with your approval and carries out annual self assessments. At the end of all those works, the board of directors will inform the shareholders, as you saw in the reference document. And proposes decisions that we will submit today to your approval.
In order to do so, the Board of Directors met seven times in 2019 with a duration of 7. Now we're per meeting where absence is very exceptional and always excused. With a 93% attendance rate. There were also 5 committees preparing the works the board knowing that each director participate at least 1 or 2 or 3 of these committees. I will now present the resolutions.
Among the most significant resolutions, you have the proposal of the dividend. The board proposes a dividend of per share, which is an increase of 8.5% compared to 2019. This is paying out the extremely good performance of the group and this sound financial situation. The board would like you also to approve the corporate offices' compensations for 2019. As you can see it on the screen, it is absolutely compliant with the approved policy last year.
The compensation of Jean Pascal Tricoire, Mr. Emmanuel Babour, that you can approve for the 7th and 8th resolutions are raising by 4% against 2018. As you can see on this graph, this evolution continues to be perfectly matching the performance of the group. This alignment is due to the structure of the compensation of the corporate leaders beyond the financial and extra financial performance of the group. On the basis of compensation of the President and CEO and the Deputy CEO.
It will continue to be based on the 3 main pillars for all the leaders of the group, which is the pay for performance alignment with shareholders' interest and competitiveness. For 2020, within the second revolution, it is proposed to keep the same structure fixed and variable compensation for Mr. Triqua and to keep the same performance criteria that you approved in April 2019 to de term in the annual compensation and the acquisition of Performance Shares. For the acquisition of the latest, this was or the latter, sorry, for the first time, we include a performance indicator for sustainable development. Which testifies for the excellent developments of Schneider Electric.
There would be a discretionary power. However, in a duly framed conditions and at any rate, will be under your scrutiny, a power that will allow circumstances of the COVID-nineteen crisis concerning the particular case of Mr. Babu, Deputy Chief Executive Officer of the group, who is leaving in a few days. The board is submitting to your approval, a regulated agreement relating to the departure of Mr. Emmanuel Babo with a no severance space, non compete agreement for 2 years with non compete indemnity, but direct competitors to Fresh Schneider Electric.
Therefore, there will be no non compete indemnity. But it will have the right to retain performance shares granted in 20182019. And for the 1st 4 months of 2020 and keep the performance shares granted in 20 2019 within the limit of his time within the group over the acquisition period representing a maximum of 27,445 shares. The final acquisition of which will depend on the achievement of stretching performance conditions in 20202021. It will be published in 20212022.
The convention as proposed reinforces the guarantee of the group with no extra cost and no impact on its cash flow. This is the object of resolutions 5 to 10. Finally, the compensation report 18 compensation already approved for by Schneider Electric. You can see on the report on the company's governance that this is, presented for 2019. Among the 5 resolutions for the renewal of the Board of Directors.
The first 4 will begin with mine, and I will not tell you my biography, I think you already know it. Cecile Cabani joined the Board of Directors of Schneider Electric in 2016, shares the committee of risks The board would like to underline appreciate the quality of the works of Mrs. Kavan. Fred Kendall, if elected, who already joined the board in 2016, will become 5 Chairman of the Board of Directors And Independent Lead Director at the end of this assembly. In order to fulfill this role, he will still be at the committee of investment, but he will leave the committee of audit and risks.
Wili Kisling is the most senior member of the board and participates with great involvement to many works of the board works since he is a member of 3 study committees.
Lastly, we're opposed to elect last board member, and then there's no Chile from Singapore, who's residing in Switzerland, which is in Financial Director of Sildzejuel has perfect knowledge of the Schneider Electric Business Activities and of Asian markets. She was co opted as a center that is a member, a nonvoting member on 1st January 2020 and has already taken part very actively in board work financial skills, really, means that she is very confident for auditing risks. These following resolutions concern financial annual and employer annual authorizations, We'll continue buyback shares and also to start again the employee, savings schemes enable Schneider Electric employees to share an The profits of the company has been shareholders. I will hand the floor to Louis Fradar, who's in the of the company for the presentation of the 5 Estuary Orderity Reports the annual accounts, consolidated accounts, regulated agreements and contract actions concerning share capital. For the employee share plan, an increase of capital reserve for employees in the foreign companies of the group.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, hello. I have the pleasure presenting to you today on behalf of the statutory auditors of the 5 audit opinions that we were issued. These reports were made available to you by your company on its internet site.
I propose, therefore, to present them to you in summary form. They're concerned ordered opinion concerning annual accounts and an audit opinion concerning consolidated accounts, report on regulated agreements and 2 reports concerning transactions of, concerning share capital. In our 2 audit opinions, we certify without any reservations of the annual consolidated accounts that will be presented for your approval in the first and second resolutions for your shareholders meeting. As far as concerning the consolidated council will indicate the first application of the IFRS 16 rule concerning leasing contracts and the interpretation, Ifrig-twenty three interpretation of the treatment of tax processing tracks. And we will present in the results the key aspects that we believe regarding to our expertise were the most important for the overdosing of the accounts.
And these concern for the annual accounts the evaluation of shares and of the receivables attached to these shares for consolidated accounts, we have focused on 4 aspects: goodwill valuation and valuation of trademarks with indefinite life span of capitalization, evaluation of development costs, recognition and recovery of deferred tax assets held in respect of tax loss carryovers. And lastly, the identification and appraisal of risks provisions for uncertain tax positions and contingent liabilities. So reconfirm the quarter that our reports are give all the other necessary information that is mandatory concerning the 4th and 5th resolutions for your General Shareholders meeting, we have issued a report on the regulated agreements. We've remind you that the commitments that were previously approved by the general assembly are no longer in this report. Our report includes the new agreement and will be the object of a prior agreement of your board.
And this concerns commitments concerning Mr. Emmanuel Webbo on the occasion of his departure from the group on 13th April 2020. And in addition, no agreement approved during the shareholders' meeting was enforced during the 2019 financial year. Lastly, concerning the extraordinary Javros meeting. We have issued 2 reports concerning resolutions concerning the share count from this concern issuance of ordinary shares or securities with cancellation of preferential subscription rights.
And the definitive conditions in which these subscription would bear having not been settled. We will not issue an opinion concerning the and as a result, on the proposal of the cancellation of preferential subscription rights that has been made to you. Ladies and gentlemen, to Cherilyn. Thank you for your attention. So all of the reports having been presented to you now, the floor is to the shareholders now.
It's being, camera meeting. So no questions can be raised during the meeting. To only the written questions that were presented before this shareholder meeting, those proposed by the advisory committee, shareholder committee. We received 12 written questions from the responsible investment forum. All the answers from the board is published on the internet site.
Before handing the floor to Emmanuel Bago and Jean Pascal required to answer two questions of the advisory shareholder advisory committee that has been asked in written form, I would like to read the message from Maki Fras Damik, who, speaks on behalf of the committee. First of all, the shareholders through the community. We'd like to commend the initiative taken by Schneider Against COVID-nineteen, the creation of the tomorrow rising front and the contribution of Jean Pascal Descartes, the members of the committee to this fund. And since it's opened, the shareholders will be able to match her contributions. The first question is as follows: the COVID-nineteen crisis has shown the strong interdependence between countries and companies.
Your business model is based on, using installers, what feedback have you had concerning the problems they're encountering with the reduction of their activity and how you could help them to whether this crisis Emmanuel have questions for you. It's a fundamental question, Jean Pascal said in his report, the Schneider Electric team, this ecosystem that we have generated around us, this network of partners and the installers are part of this ecosystem is essential to our success. And this is what us our ability to be very close to our final customers and to have extremely diffuse presence. It's very complicated at this time to, continue for installers and we are supporting them as much as Canada. They are greatly impacted by the example of France.
We see, unfortunately, the majority of the works have been stopped, and this has an impact on other installers. The first thing we're doing is that we're very close contact with them. Yeah. We're clear, of course, but also through the different professional associations and through the distributors. There's great deal of work that's being done to help them.
And to help them, sort out all the red tape when it comes to applying for support and assistance on helping them list, Andrea. You saw clearly during our presentation. We ourselves, great deal of our business activities are still ongoing because we have to continue to ensure these critical services, and the Schneider team is going to continue to work. We're going to involve our installers for these critical operations. At the end of refinement, I think we're coming to the end of this confinement and it's necessary to resume our activities.
And we're working with them to ensure that, we, when we get back to activity, should not be any health risks for people working the field, and we are looking on a case by case basis to see how we can start our business activities, normally, again, making sure that we take no risks. All the sites work sites that can be reopened will be reopened. Now we also have to work on training for our partners and installers. So a lot of work has been done in digital training with webinars. And the last thing that's been done, we have a sort of task force a watch team for the more critical cases if any of our partners were in major country major problems, we are there to help them, to provide support and see how we can help them.
And that's all these are all the things that we're doing with our installers and more widely with all of the partners that we work with. Thank you very much, Emmanuel. I'm going to read you a second question that Jean Pascal will answer. You took strong commitments within the context of the EV 100 initiative, in perspective 20, 30, 2050? Will the coronavirus crisis have an impact on these commitments by postponing to later date the, these objectives The COVID crisis does not have an impact on a way of do you have an echo?
The coronavirus crisis has not impact. I have a lot of echo at one moment. So I'm going to start again. So there's no impact on our commitments when it comes to sustainable development. Snyder's mission at Resorte Debt, its purpose, delivering to a customer's digital solutions for safe development of something that we apply in our particular case So we are, among the 200 companies that are subscribing to the 1.5 degrees objective for in the global compact name, we're part of a group of 8 companies that have set objectives or reduction of greenhouse gases based on initiative that relies on scientifically evaluated methods and we have taken commitment of improving our energy consumption through the EV 100 companies, EP100 Countries.
These companies are committed to using renewable energies are E100 and the EV100 companies that are going to go to mission all of these initiatives. And we are participating in all of these initiatives We have decided to take commitments that are even more focused, carbon neutrality by 2015, the principle of using green certificates to enable us to compensate for certain carbon emissions. Now it will be net 0 in terms of operational emissions in 2030. That's scope 1 and 2 that concerns Schneider Electric and to be net 0, including all our suppliers, in 20 to 50. And you know that 70% of the value that we generate is produced by its supplier.
So it's considerable effort, disbursement all along our value change. And I mentioned also to end SF6 in a medium voltage and throughout our interest. So this toxic gas, that is impacting climate change and to have a system without gas based only on to 25. It's a factor at Schneider. It is a commitment that is not going to change as a consequence of the COVID crisis what we've observed with our customers, so within our ecosystem.
COVID reminds us how, nature is a threat to our living conditions and our lifestyles and to the depution of the virus and climate change are the effects of our increasing urbanization and economic development. And around the world, there is, growing awareness, thanks to COVID-nineteen, and it's really making sure that companies are focusing on the fundamentals and especially fighting against pollution fighting against climate change and the different, packages for a redevelopment economy will be really focused on the fight against climate change. Until I'm going to her and the floor to Delfinjure to read the resolutions. Thank you. Thank you, Lou.
The quorum for the verde resolutions of the ordinary meeting, an extraordinary meeting, having been, attend. We can, therefore, proceed the 1st grade solution is concerns the approval of operations and corporate accounts for 2019 financial year. The votes expressed, therefore, initial approval of the first resolution. The second resolution also that is to be decided by the ordinary shares meeting, concerns consolidated accounts of 2019. The resolution has approved 100 Center resolution dropped at 100%.
3rd resolution, and that's for the ordinary shareholders meeting, concerns distribution of dividend of EUR2.55 per share. The dividend will be paying out on 7th May, 2020. This resolution is approved, and the resolution is adopted at 98.95%. The 4th resolution, this is for the ordinary shareholders meeting, and the concerns information related party agreement, executed in previous financial years. The resolution is adopted in a majority of 99.56 that.
The 5th resolution for the oil per shareholders meeting is approval. It's concerned related party agreement in relation to the departure turns of the deputy chief executive officer, Mister Emmanuel Babel. The 5th resolution is adopted with a majority of 97.14%. 6 resolution concerns the ordinary general assembly, general assemblies meeting and concerns the compensation report for the 2019 financial year, and the resolution is adopted at 93.6% 7th bridge, which concerns the ordinary showers meeting concerns approval of elements of compensation, benefits of all types paid or granted in respect to the 2019 financial union term, Mr. Schoppaszka based on the Burt's Express.
The 7th resolution is adopted with 89.39 percent of the Burt's. Now 8th resolution for the ordinary shareholder meetings approval concerns the elements of compensation, benefits of all types paid or granted in respect to the 2019 financial year 2, Mr. Emmanuel Babron. The resolution is dotted 92.86%. Now I can say the 9th resolution.
The ordinary shareholders' meeting's approval, approval, compensation policy for the Chairman and Chief Executive of Mr. Figma. The resolution is adopted. We have the majority of 90.55%. The 10th resolution, which concerns the ordinary shareholders' meeting, you asked to approve the compensation policy specifically applicable Ultimate Emmanuel Barber, Deputy Chief Executive Officer in the context of his departure and the elements of compensation and benefits of all types paid, routed to him, in respect of the 2020 financial year.
The resolution is adopted with a majority of 94.08%. The 11 resolution concerning the ordinary shareholders meeting asked to approve the compensation policy of the members of the Board of Directors. The resolution, 11th resolution is adopted was a majority of 96.76%. It's 12th resolution, which concerns the ordinary shareholders' meeting. And so it's renewal of the term of Mr.
Leo that took us, mandate or term of office for 3 years, his term of office will come to mind at the 2023 Shareholders Meeting. The resolution is adopted with a majority of 94.12%.
The 13th resolution within the competence of the ordinary shareholders meeting is on the renewal of the term of Mrs. Ceci's Gavani's an ordinary re duration of 4 years. Mandate will end at the end of the general shareholders meeting of 2024. The resolution is adopted with a majority of 79.08%. The 14th resolution is the competence of the ordinary shareholders' meetings that is proposed to renew the term of Mr.
Fred Kindle for an identical duration of 4 years the mandate will therefore expire at the end of the shareholders meeting in 2024. The resolution is adopted with a majority 98.33%. In the 15th resolution of the ordinary shareholders meeting, It is proposed to renew the term of Mr. Willie Kinstlinger for a duration of 2 years given his age. The mandate will end at the end of the shareholders meeting of 2022.
The resolution is adopted with a majority of 84.28%. In the 16th resolution within the ordinary shareholders meeting, you have to, approve the appointment of a new Director, Mrs. Jill D for a duration of 4 years, which will expire at the assembly of 2024. The resolution is adopted by 86.32% of the votes. The 17th resolution in the competence of the ordinary shareholders meeting is on the authorization granted to the Board of Directors to buy back their own shares, the company shares within the following limit, authorization limit to 10% of share capital maximum as.
Authorization is valid 18 months. It was adopted at 98.62%. The 18th resolution is under the competence of the extraordinary shareholders meeting, which is to adopt the amendment of Article 11.4 of the articles of association to meet consistent with the amendment laws and provide the appointment of the 2nd director representing employees by the European Works Council. The resolution is adopted by 98.91%. The 19th resolution is also in the competence of the extraordinary meeting is on the amendment of particles 1316 of the articles of association to reflect the amended laws in correct clerical error as well.
The resolution is adopted by 98.91 percent. 20th resolution is also the competence of the ordinary shareholders meeting. This is about the increase in capital reserve for employees. Delegation of authority granted to the Board of Directors for increasing the capital in favor of employees adhering to the company savings program with a maximum below for rate of 30% on the average list of price. The resolution is adopted at 96 point an 89% of boats.
In the 21st resolution, the last resolution of the extraordinary shareholders meeting. It is us to increase in capital reserve specific category of beneficiaries, employees in foreign countries within the group, authorization covering to vote on the ceiling of 2% for increases capital reserve. This 21st resolution is, adopted with 97.02 percent of votes. We reached now the 20 second resolution, the last one for the ordinary shareholders meeting, it's powers for accomplishing formalities. The resolution is adopted with 100% of votes.
Thank you for your attention. Well, thank you, Delphine, for this, reading of all the resolutions I am very happy that the shareholders' meeting approved all those resolutions. Thank you very much to all the shareholders for that. And thank you also for following this meeting in our original and digital form. I regret that we couldn't meet in person today.
I would like to thank all those who organize this very good shareholders meeting in particular Delfinzi. Thank you very much for your commitment and your trust for so many years. We are fully mobilized to go through this crisis of COVID-nineteen. And 1st and foremost, for the health and that we have to accomplish. Please make sure you take good care of yourselves and your families Let's meet next year for the shareholders meeting 2021.
Leo Jean Pascal, ladies, gentlemen. Thank you very sincerely for attending the shareholders meeting. Before we all leave, I would like to wish you well and give you the next date of the meeting which will take place on the 28th April 2021 at the Palle de Congre of Paris, and I hope we will meet again in a great numbers. Thank you very much. Have a good afternoon.