Good morning. Welcome to our 2026 Annual General Meeting. This is the fifth time we've hosted a hybrid meeting, and we're delighted to welcome those who've joined us both in person here today, but also virtually. We know this venue has proved to be very popular with our shareholders over the years, both logistically and acoustically. We are pleased to once again be hosting the AGM here at the BMA. As a reminder, an audio induction loop is in place for those individuals wearing a hearing aid. As you will know, we always aim to make the AGM as welcoming and friendly as we can, and we continue to welcome your feedback. I'd invite you to share your views with either myself or any of my colleagues after the meeting.
This AGM is a particularly meaningful one for me, as it will be my last one after nearly 20 years as your company secretary. It's been an absolute privilege to work for this great company for so many years, and I've always enjoyed welcoming you all and sharing a cup of tea over lunch together at our AGMs. Over the years, I've been really fortunate to be able to work with great colleagues, and I would particularly like to thank the members of the legal and governance team for all their support and great work over the years, including making sure that this AGM continues to be an enjoyable event for you all. I'm really delighted to be handing over the baton to Maria Alvarez-Scott, who I know will do an excellent job as the next Group General Counsel and Company Secretary.
Maria is here in the front row today. I'd also like to extend my thanks to Sir John Kingman, who will be stepping down as Chair after nine years. John's been a brilliant Chair. He's provided thoughtful leadership and wise counsel to the board and management throughout his tenure, and it's been an absolute privilege for me to work for him and closely with him and share this stage over the years. I'd also like to welcome Scott Wheway, who will succeed John as Chair following the conclusion of today's meeting. Finally, could you indulge me while I also welcome my 11-year-old son, Julian, who's come to see what an AGM actually is after hearing his dad talk about it over the years. This year also marks Legal & General's 190th anniversary, an important milestone in the group's history.
You'll have seen the video showcasing our key achievements over the years, and there are also a number of historical artifacts on display downstairs, which I would encourage you all to view over lunch. As a reminder, alongside the notice of meeting for the AGM, you will have received a separate notice for the general meeting at which shareholders will be asked to consider and vote on resolutions relating to a proposed capital reduction. We will take a short break after the conclusion of the AGM before we formally open the general meeting. At this point, shareholders who do not wish to stay for the general meeting are very welcome to make their way downstairs for lunch. Before we commence the meeting, there are the usual housekeeping matters to let you know about, starting with evacuation procedure. In the event of emergency, the fire alarm will sound.
There are no planned fire tests taking place today. If you hear the alarm, please leave via the nearest emergency exit, avoiding use of the lift, and make your way through the courtyard to the front of the building. Colleagues, both from the L&G and the BMA will be available to assist you. With that introduction, I can confirm that we have a quorum present and declare this AGM and poll now formally open. If you've not already done so, please can I ask you to switch off your mobile phones. I will now hand over to your chair, Sir John Kingman.
Thank you, Geoffrey, and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Legal & General's 2026 AGM. It's wonderful to see so many of you here in person, and I'd like to offer a warm welcome to those joining us online as well. We greatly value the opportunity to engage directly with you, and that's why we're pleased once again to offer this meeting in a hybrid format, ensuring that every shareholder who wishes to participate can do so. The sequence of today's meeting will be broadly familiar to those of you who've attended our AGMs before. I'll start by reflecting briefly on some of our achievements and milestones in 2025. Following those remarks, I'll hand over to Antonio, who will talk you through our company's performance through the last year. Before we begin, I'll cover the changes to our group board and management team since we last convened.
We've made a number of important leadership appointments over the past year. Jeff Davies officially stepped down from the position of Group Chief Financial Officer in December 2025. I'd like to thank Jeff for his significant contribution to L&G during his time with us. Andrew Kail has now taken up the position as Group Chief Financial Officer. Before Andrew started this position, he led Institutional Retirement for us and the former Retail Retirement division at L&G. Before that, he held very senior positions at PwC. I'd also like to extend profound thanks from myself and the board to Geoffrey, who's very well known to many shareholders in the room today and is stepping down following this AGM from his role of Group General Counsel and Company Secretary after an extraordinary stint of 27 years. Geoffrey's made an exceptional contribution to L&G.
Across nearly three decades, he has helped steward the business through periods of great economic change, supported its strategic evolution, and played a vital role in building the partnerships that will continue to shape our future. He's also been a much valued source of wise advice and counsel to me, to my predecessors, to numerous chief executives he's worked with, and to the whole board. On behalf of the board and on behalf of shareholders too, I'd like to express our immense thanks to Geoffrey for his unique contribution. I'm delighted to note that Maria Alvarez-Scott will succeed Geoffrey. Maria brings not only outstanding legal expertise, but also a deep understanding of the business, strategy, and the culture, and she will be a tremendous asset to the management team and the board as we look to the future. We've also welcomed Emma Holden as Chief People Officer.
Gareth Mee has succeeded Andrew Kail as CEO of Institutional Retirement. Finally, I'd like to thank Chris Knight, our chief risk officer, who will shortly be leaving after an impressive 17 years with us. We'll provide an update on Chris' successor at the appropriate point. It's really particularly pleasing that the majority of these changes have been appointed from within the company. To be able to draw on candidates of this caliber for these roles is a testament to the depth of talent across the group and to effective succession planning. Turning now to the board itself. First, I'd like to extend my thanks to Ric Lewis, who after 6 years of service, retired from the board on Monday. I'm delighted to welcome Mark Jordy to his first AGM as independent non-executive director.
Appointed in July 2025, Mark Jordy was already chair of our asset management business board and brings over 40 years' experience in the asset management industry. As you'll be aware, this AGM also marks an important point of transition. In accordance with good governance practice and after 10 AGMs as chair, I will be stepping down from the board today. I'd like to thank my board colleagues, the management team, and our shareholders for all of the support I've received during my tenure. It's been an honor to steward the board of Legal & General through the last decade. As you know, Scott Wheway has been appointed as a non-executive director and chair designate, and I'm very pleased to welcome him here today to his first AGM.
Scott previously served as chair of Scottish Widows, Centrica, and AXA UK and has held a wide range of directorships following an immensely successful executive career. Scott will assume the role of chair at the conclusion of today's meeting. The process to appoint Scott as my successor was led by Henrietta Henn in her capacity as senior independent director, together with the Group Nominations and Corporate Governance Committee. Thank you to Henrietta and Committee for managing that process. Our board and leadership team members will, of course, be available to answer your questions during and after the meeting today. Before handing over to Antonio, I do want to reflect on some of the company's highlights in 2025. In 2024, we shared with investors our vision of a growing, simpler, and better-connected L&G, delivering enhanced returns to shareholders through a sharper focus on our core businesses.
2025 was a year of demonstrating delivery against this objective. Since establishing our Corporate Investments Unit in June 2024, we've now divested GBP 1.5 billion of non-strategic assets, positioning the group well for future growth. This also supports enhanced returns for shareholders through the most substantial share buyback program in our history. In February 2025, we announced a GBP 1.8 billion transaction with Meiji Yasuda Life, through which they acquired our U.S. protection business and entered a long-term strategic partnership with L&G to strengthen our position in U.S. PRT. I was delighted to welcome Meiji Yasuda's Chair, Akio Negishi, and CEO Hideki Nagashima, to London in October to mark this partnership. We also continued to build our international capabilities.
At the end of 2024, we acquired a strategic stake in Taurus, a US real estate business, and in 2025, we took a 75% stake in Proprium, expanding our European and Asian footprint. We also appointed Tim Morris and Philipp Westermann, co-managing partners of Proprium, as global co-heads of real assets in asset management at L&G to accelerate our global growth drive in that business. In July last year, we announced a strategic partnership with Blackstone to source assets that support expansion into new markets in asset management and the continued growth of our PRT business. We've set an ambitious target of reaching GBP 85 billion in private markets assets under management by 2028. In fact, we are already at GBP 75 billion, driven by 32% year-on-year growth. In PRT, 2025 was a landmark year.
We completed the largest PRT transaction announced in the U.K. in that year, a GBP 4.6 billion buy-in for the Ford Pension Schemes. That deal secured the benefits of more than 35,000 members and brought our global PRT volumes to GBP 11.8 billion for that year. As the transition from DB to DC pension continues, we surpassed GBP 200 billion in total DC assets under management, setting an industry record. We continue to direct our own capital and that of clients towards high-quality, productive assets that deliver strong long-term financial returns while supporting U.K. economic growth. In 2025, we announced a commitment to invest GBP 2 billion into housing, infrastructure, and urban regeneration across the U.K. and published our Blueprint for Growth research highlighting the significant economic benefits of unlocking more pension capital and directing that towards productive U.K. assets.
Meanwhile, we have been clear that business success must translate into enhanced returns for you, our shareholders. We recently announced our commitment to return more than GBP 5 billion to shareholders between 2025 and 2027, roughly 40% of our market capitalization at that time, through a combination of dividends and buybacks. We completed the first GBP 200 million of these buybacks in 2024, followed by GBP 500 million in 2025. Following the completion of the transaction with Meiji Yasuda in February this year, we also announced a planned GBP 1.2 billion share buyback, which is already well underway. As we've made progress, the group's values and long-term commitment have remained constant. In December 2024, the board endorsed a refreshed purpose, investing for the long term, our futures depend on it. This reflects our focus on creating lasting value for shareholders, customers, and the wider economy.
That long-term perspective is particularly important in times of heightened uncertainty across the world. Over the course of 2025, we brought this purpose to life for our colleagues, and through them, for our clients and customers. We did this by providing clarity on the behaviors we want to nurture at L&G. Those behaviors encourage us to challenge positively, act decisively, and commit together. When consistently applied, they create momentum and drive delivery against our strategy. We're already seeing colleagues exemplify these behaviors across the group, and the board and I are very proud of everything our teams have achieved at L&G this year. Finally, I just want to reflect very briefly, not just on the previous year, but on the nine years I've been your chair. When I joined L&G in 2016, we were a very different organization. We operated six businesses.
We've since exited a number of them, simplified the group, and sharpened our strategic focus. We've concentrated resources on the areas where we have genuine competitive advantage and long-term structural demand. In each of our divisions, we now have greater scale, clearer strategic purpose, and stronger alignment to long-term growth markets. The result is a business that is more focused, more resilient, and better positioned for sustainable growth. Our Institutional Retirement business was then almost entirely U.K.-focused. Today, it's an international business with a track record of executing some of the largest and most complex transactions in the market and delivering for millions of pension savers. We are now the leading global PRT provider. In asset management, we had GBP 894 billion of assets under management when I became chair.
At year-end 2025, that figure is now over GBP 1.2 trillion, reflecting both the strength of our client relationships and the expansion of our capabilities across public and private markets, as well as our growing global footprint. We've continued to innovate in our retail business, launching what is now the U.K.'s highest-rated workplace pension app in 2024. This digitization journey continues as L&G looks to leverage the latest advancements to give customers an even better service. Alongside this growth, our capital position has strengthened. We've consistently demonstrated the resilience of our balance sheet and the discipline with which we manage capital through a period of considerable market and regulatory change.
We've successfully navigated the aftermath of Brexit, the introduction of fundamental changes to both the capital regulatory regime and the accounting framework we operate under, the COVID pandemic, during which we were proud to maintain our dividend, and the LDI crisis, which followed the so-called mini budget of the Liz Truss government. This resilience is fundamental to our most important responsibility, which is to meet our obligations to pension customers for years and decades to come, whatever the geopolitical and macroeconomic challenges. As I move on, I'd like to thank all my colleagues for everything they've done to make these achievements possible. I would also like to thank shareholders for their support. I have great confidence in the future. I wish the company every success.
I look forward to following L&G's continued progress as it continues to deliver long-term value, make a positive contribution to the economy, and play an important role in improving financial security for future generations. I'll now hand over to Antonio.
Thank you, John. Great to see you all again here this morning. Good morning. 2025, as John just mentioned, was a really important year for L&G. We built real momentum across the Group and made strong progress against the strategy that I announced back in 2024. We strengthened our foundations and reshaped the business for long-term growth while delivering robust financial performance for you, our shareholders. As we announced in March at our full-year results, our core operating profit rose 6% to GBP 1.6 billion in 2025, and our core operating earnings per share grew at 9%, which is at the top end of our 6%-9% target range. We also continued at this important to grow our store of future profits to GBP 13.3 billion.
Importantly, given the volatile world that John just mentioned and the world that we're living in right now, we have a strong capital position with a 2025 pro forma Solvency II ratio of 210% after the disposal of our U.S. protection business to Meiji Yasuda and the related share buyback. These results underline the resilience of our model and the benefits of the changes that we've made over the last 2 years. We are reshaping L&G into a simpler, growing, and better-connected business. Let me take you through those 3 components. First, simpler. We have simplified the group, focusing our capital and our broader resources where they create the most value. As John just mentioned, since creating the Corporate Investments Unit back in 2024, we have now disposed of GBP 1.5 billion of its assets.
In February of this year, we also completed the sale of our U.S. protection business to Meiji Yasuda as part of a growing strategic partnership with them. We have streamlined the organization, and we've reduced complexity. One of the ways we've done this is by using technology. As an example, last year, we rolled out an AI-powered customer service platform in Retail in collaboration with Microsoft. Basically, this brings multiple systems into a single view, helping our teams resolve customer queries faster and more consistently. That was simpler. Second, growing. Across our three core businesses, we continued to build momentum last year in 2025, and also this year. In Institutional Retirement, we had an excellent year. We wrote GBP 11.8 billion of pension risk transfer business globally. Here in the U.K., we had a particularly strong year with a 27% market share.
This included transactions with Ford, which John just mentioned, with BP, and with NatWest. Our asset management business reached a revenue inflection point with positive GBP 34 million in annualized net new revenue. We ended the year with GBP 1.2 trillion in assets under management. Within this, private markets grew 32% to GBP 75 billion, helping to increase our average revenue margin to 9 basis points. We also had a strong year in retail across protection, annuities, and workplace. In annuities, we wrote GBP 1.8 billion of new business. Our workplace DC assets grew by 21% to GBP 114 billion.
We won several new schemes last year with GBP 3.7 billion of assets to be onboarded this year in 2026. We also continue to invest in our customer experience with an 8-point increase in our workplace savings net promoter score, alongside an improvement to our top-rated retail app and our at-retirement guidance. Finally, I'm proud that we are now a better-connected business and more strategically aligned. Our leading market share businesses in growing markets have clear synergies between them, and this is a genuine competitive advantage. For example, as the largest asset manager in the UK, 80% of our UK pension risk transfer transactions are with existing asset management clients.
Our asset management business manages over 90% of our annuity assets and over 95% of our workplace DC assets. Beyond these commercial synergies, we also have significant operational synergies. Our institutional and retail annuities businesses share investment and customer services teams, creating scale advantages, and the investments we make in AI and technology benefit the entirety of L&G. All of this allows us to return more to you, our shareholders. In March, we announced a GBP 1.2 billion share buyback, the largest in our 190-year history.
Combined with a 2% dividend per share growth, this brings the planned returns to shareholders to GBP 2.4 billion over the next year. We are returning more than GBP 5 billion over 2025, 2026, and 2027. I'm proud of what we've achieved this year, but I'm even prouder of how we've done it. We now have the right leadership team to lead L&G into the future, having made key changes over the last 18 months. Eric Adler, CEO of Asset Management, and Laura Mason, CEO of Retail, have been in their respective businesses for over a year now. As Andrew Kail took over as Group CFO, I promoted Gareth Mee as our CEO of Institutional Retirement last December. Maria Alvarez-Scott, as John mentioned, has joined my leadership team and takes over from Geoffrey Timms as the Group General Counsel and Company Secretary at the end of today's meeting.
I would like also to thank Geoffrey for his 35 years of service to L&G and 27 years as Company Secretary, and also for his support to me over the last two and a half years. Geoffrey, you will be missed. Last year, Katie Worgan joined L&G as the Chief Operating Officer, and earlier this year, Emma Holden, and Andy Sinclair also joined the leadership team as Chief People Officer and Chief Strategy & Investor Relations Officer, respectively. I'm confident that we now have the right team around me to deliver our strategy and create value for you, our shareholders. Apart from strengthening the top team, we have also continued to focus on our purpose, investing for the long term, our futures depend on it. That purpose reflects our commitment to our customers and clients, and our role supporting communities and the wider economy.
I want to thank all our colleagues for their hard work last year and for their efforts continuing to deliver and drive forward our strategy. I'd also like to thank the board for their support to me and to the management team. I particularly want to thank our Chair, John Kingman, for your leadership, John, over almost 10 years. On a personal note, I'm usually grateful for the role that you play in bringing me to L&G and your support, encouragement, challenge, and counsel over the last three years. Something shareholders may not realize is that in our 190-year history, John is only the 16th chair that we've had in 190 years.
I look back at John's first letter to shareholders in 2016. It's remarkable how you, John, have remained true to what you set out back then, the belief in the strength of our people, the potential of our businesses, and the importance of long-term thinking. You definitely leave this company on a stronger footing. Ladies and gentlemen, please join me in thanking your Chair, Sir John Kingman. Last year, I said I was as ambitious for our future as I am proud of our history. That ambition has only grown. Today, we are a sharper, more focused business with a clear North Star. We have a compelling strategic direction and the right leadership team. We are delivering sustainable growth and returning more to shareholders. Next month, L&G will be 190 years old. We were founded in 1936.
1836.
1836. There will be 90 years rather than 190. Thank you, John Kingman. That's why we have our Chair. Founded in 1836 by 6 lawyers, we have grown from a small insurance company into a growing international business with almost 2 centuries of innovation, boldness, and long-term thinking at our core. I'm excited about what comes next. Thank you for being with us on this journey and for your continued trust in us to deliver for you.
Thank you, Antonio. I'd now like to ask Geoffrey to run through the formal business of the meeting before we move on to questions.
Thank you, John. The notice of meeting was published on the company's website and made available to shareholders on the 9th of April. It is also available to view under the Documents tab on the Lumi platform for those of you online. As in previous years, and with your permission, I propose to take the notice of meeting as read and confirm that all resolutions will be decided on a poll. Thank you. I now formally propose that each of the resolutions, as set out in the notice of meeting and appearing on the screen behind me, is put to the meeting as a separate resolution. Further, that resolutions number 22 to 26 are put to the meeting as special resolutions. As a reminder, the poll is already open and will close at the end of the meeting.
For those of you with us today in person, please complete the poll card, which you should have been given when you registered this morning. This is a combined poll card for both the AGM and our separate general meeting taking place shortly after the AGM. Votes for the AGM should be lodged in the first section of the poll card with the blue heading. You can do this by putting a tick or a cross in 1 of the boxes marked For, Against, or Withheld, or by indicating the number of shares you wish to vote on for any of these 3 options. If there is anyone present who is entitled to vote and who does not have a poll card, please raise your hand and 1 of my colleagues will bring 1 to you. As a reminder, guests are not entitled to vote.
Finally, please ensure that you've signed the poll card. All final signed poll cards should be placed in the ballot box at the doorway as you leave this meeting. One of my colleagues is standing next to the ballot box in order to help collect poll cards for the general meeting, which will be duly submitted once the poll is open. For those shareholders attending online, the Voting icon will appear on the navigation bar. Once you click on this, the resolutions will appear on the screen along with the For, Against, and Withheld voting options. Simply select one of these options to cast your vote. Your vote will have been submitted when the voting option icon changes color, having selected it, and a Vote Received message appears.
If any person attending the meeting online is having any difficulties with using the platform, there is a user guide available in the Documents tab, but also on page 11 of the notice of meeting. The company's registrars will act as scrutineers, and the final result of the voting will be announced to the London Stock Exchange and posted on the company's website as soon as possible as usual. If you would like a paper copy of the results posted to you, please let one of my colleagues know on your way out. John, I will now hand back to you to open the question and answer session.
Thank you very much, Geoffrey. We'll now very happily take questions from shareholders. Please can I remind you to ask only one question each to allow fellow shareholders the opportunity to ask their questions. If you'd like to ask a question, please raise your hand and a steward will bring a microphone to you. When called, please could you give your name and state whether you are a shareholder, a proxy, or a corporate representative. If you've joined us online, please select the messaging icon from within the navigation bar, type your questions into the question box at the top of the screen. To submit your questions, click on the arrow icon to the right of the text box. May I now take the first question? Gentleman here, please.
Nick Steiner, private shareholder. Thank you for the presentations and good luck to you on your retirement.
Thank you.
Wherever you're going. The question is on asset management. I need a little bit more understanding of what it is. Clearly, it's in real estate. It provides diversified public-private investment solutions to clients globally. What do you mean by that? Are you in South America or wherever? You talk about Europe and Asia and so forth. Can we have a little bit more explanation of what an asset is? Is it just real estate? Where are you?
Thank you for the question. I'm going to ask Antonio to respond. In short, we're very, very proud of our asset management business. It's one that has flourished over the years. I'm sorry to say that that's not true of many U.K. asset managers who we would historically have seen as strong competitors. We're very proud of the continued success of our business in a whole range of asset classes. Yes, it is absolutely a global business and needs to be. Antonio.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the question. We have GBP 1.2 trillion of assets under management. That's primarily in the public markets. To your point about public and private, yes, it covers public and private markets, but if you listen earlier, I was saying we have GBP 75 billion in private markets. We have more than GBP 1.1 trillion in public markets. When you think about public markets, it's us investing on behalf of many retail customers and others, in their pensions and more generally in terms of clients that invest in other equities or in debt. In terms of the international spread, 44% of our assets are outside the U.K. 56% are here in the U.K., and 44% of that GBP 1.2 trillion are outside the U.K. What geographies? You mentioned South America. That's the one geography where we're not.
North America, the U.S. is a very important market for us. Continental Europe, one of our fastest-growing geographies is Asia. In Asia, we have three offices, one in Tokyo, one in Hong Kong, and the most recent one in Singapore. If you think of that, 44%, it's roughly divided that way. U.S., continental Europe, and Asia. Our strongest market continues to be the U.K. We have 56% of our overall GBP 1.2 trillion here.
Thank you. Next question, please. Gentleman here. I'm not sure that's working.
Sorry about that.
Can I take another question while we make the microphone work? Gentleman here.
Thank you very much. My name's Phil Clark. I'm a long-term shareholder. Actually, here via proxy, as it turns out. First of all, many congratulations to you for what you've achieved here in this company. It's been fabulous. I said all that last year, because I wasn't expecting you to still be.
You can say it as often as you like.
This company has come on by leaps and bounds under your chairmanship, many congratulations. Can I also say thanks to Mr. Timms, who to my mind has done an excellent job. Very solid, very professional, and a decent man. Thank you, Mr. Timms, as well. Welcome, Mr. Wheway. We've seen you appear many places, look forward to seeing much more of you here. Also Mr. Kail, nice to see you as well. I've got two questions. I'm sure you'll forgive me that.
Given you've been so nice, I think I'll indulge you.
Because I've been polite. Mr. Kail, I was intrigued by the CFO report, where you say that you're listening to investors who need greater clarity and transparency on financial performance that can feel a bit opaque. It was disappointing that your report was only 1 page long, it was shorter than any other section in the annual report. I've got 2 questions on that. First of all, the Solvency II coverage ratio dropped from 232%-203%. That isn't addressed anywhere in the report as far as I can see, it's a sort of mission-critical part of understanding of where the company is. I don't know if you could please just expand on what that is.
Secondly, deep within the report on page 155, there are asset revaluations where we have write-downs of private market assets of GBP 300 million this year, last year, for quite a while. Obviously, in the scheme of our investment, it's modest. I've never understood why that's excluded from adjusted operating profit. Can you tell us a bit more about that, please?
Andrew?
Thank you for your questions. You're right, I took on the role a few months ago and did go on a listening tour of talking to investors, and part of the results that Antonio and I presented on the 11th of March gave a lot of additional disclosure to our analysts in the market after listening to some disclosure that they wanted to provide, and that definitely includes more disclosure around our solvency ratio. If you go to our analyst presentation, you'll see a very comprehensive waterfall of how the solvency ratio's moved, which was one of your questions. Also a comprehensive explanation of investment variances, which is your second question. Both of your questions, very pertinent to what our analysts were saying they wanted to hear more about from us. The solvency ratio, which is your first question, has moved.
I would say the solvency ratio is still very strong. Antonio mentioned it in his opening remarks at 210%. That's still a very strong solvency ratio across the sector. We're very proud of that. It's very helpful when we're discussing transactions with trustees. It moves in accordance with many factors, often is rates, and therefore there's a market dynamic to that. Also as we're investing more capital in growing the business. Antonio referenced the amount of PRT business we wrote last year, GBP 11.8 billion.
That consumes capital. We have a very disciplined capital allocation policy. We're comfortable with the returns on that capital, but that does use solvency as we invest in the business. Your second question was around asset valuations. One of the things I did coming in as CFO is take a very sort of long and hard look at our asset valuations across all of the business.
I worked very closely with Eric, our Asset Management CEO. Given the market movements we've seen in recent years, particularly with rates, we felt it was appropriate to look again at some of the assets we'd valued and make some adjustments. We have seen earnings revision downwards on that. That has been commented by our external analysts and shareholders, and we felt it was time to draw a line and give a firmer base to move forward, and that we're now very comfortable with those valuations.
Thank you. Do you mind, if you will forgive me, if we have time, I will come back to you at the end, but I do need to take questions from other shareholders, if that is okay.
Okay. That was only question 1, parts A and B, but I've still got question 2.
Well, let me see what we can do with others, and if we have time, we'll come back. Let's see if the microphone's now working.
Thank you very much. My name's Roland Baker, Mr. Chairman. I've got 1,250 ordinaries, which I bought with my own money in August 2011, so I'm not too worried about the present share price, nor am I too worried about the dividends that I've received in the meantime. It is on the question of dividends that I'd like to speak to the meeting and raise the points that I notified in advance. With regard to the dividends are obviously payable to the shareholders based on being able to meet the regulatory obligations that we have to meet our policyholders' expectations.
We are paying quite a large dividend by reference to what we've earned because the main component of the dividend calculation in note 7 to the accounts contains an investment variance adjustment, which is considerably the greater part of what we're actually paying out. If we look at note 7, we've earned about GBP 0.08 a share, and for the year we're paying about GBP 0.20 in dividends. That brings me to page 81.1 of the Pillar 3 disclosures. I've just made a note of it and printed the page out here so that I don't mistake myself when I'm stating this out. If you'd just like to bear with me a second. Hang on. I had it in my hand a minute ago. Right.
As the previous shareholder, Phil Clark, said, there was a bit of a wobble in the share price on the falling of the solvency coverage at the time we announced the results, and we had to go back and explain that to the institutional investors. The group regulatory basis on page 81 of the Pillar 3 disclosure shows 203%. The group impact of 169% is the impact of withdrawing the matching adjustment, and that takes the group adjusted balance down to 34%. In the life insurance company, the capital coverage ratio on a regulatory basis was 197%, but the impact of withdrawing the matching adjustment was 173%, and that took the coverage ratio down to 24%. Now, Section 172 of the Companies Act 2006 was very easy to understand when I started looking at accounts. You were only required to run the business in the interest of the shareholders.
Since then, half a dozen other categories of people we have to take into account have been added. You now have to go down to Section 172(6) to look at the other stakeholder obligations. I would like to fundamentally question whether the purpose of our business, albeit that it is to pay dividends to shareholders on the profits that we made, should cause us to consider retaining a bit more capital because what is in the matching adjustment has been revalued and varied according to the regulations since we had CP19/23 when, for example, we were allowed to put some investment grade stock in it.
If I refer to paragraph 216 of PS10/24, we have to securitize residential, for example, or other mortgage-backed securities in order to make them into senior assets that are eligible to be counted as part of the matching adjustment. Now, it's not like the matching adjustment portfolio is held as a pot of cash. It's held by the valuation of the investments that it contains. In view of the large discrepancy that there is between the solvency coverage ratio with and without the matching adjustment, do we need to retain more capital in the business from the dividend in order to meet the requirements of our other stakeholders?
Thank you for your question. I'm going to ask Andrew to comment on the substance. If he can't do full justice to what you've raised here, he will speak to you further afterwards. Just to be absolutely clear about how the board thinks about this, I wouldn't say that our most fundamental responsibility is to pay dividends. I think our most fundamental responsibility is to meet our obligations to our customers and to be here as a company in order to meet our obligations to customers for many, many, many years to come. Therefore, I think the board's sort of starting point is very much around the resilience of the balance sheet. I would say that the balance sheet has proved extremely resilient despite a whole range of macroeconomic shocks, certainly through my time as chair.
In making a judgment about the dividend, we're extremely aware of the importance of the dividend to our shareholders, and so that's absolutely firmly in the front of our minds, but so is the sustainability of the dividend. We always make a very careful judgment about what is the right path that enables us to pay a dividend that is welcomed by our shareholders, but one that is clearly resilient to whatever the external world can throw at us. That's the philosophy. Andrew, could you say something about the detail?
Yeah. Thanks, John. I'd first like to say I really appreciate the question. It'd be very pleasing for the team and I to know that all the hard work that goes into our disclosures have been so carefully read. That's definitely makes all the hard work worthwhile. Thank you for that. Just building on what John said, first off, the solvency position, as I said to the previous question, is very strong. It's one of the measures that we look at and supports the dividend payment we have. You mentioned the impact of the investment variance. The measure that we look at for paying out the dividend is a core operating profit measure, sort of an EPS on a core operating profit. Investment variance move with markets doesn't really change.
Many of the categories of that don't really change our operating decisions, therefore, the core is better than the underlying for looking at dividend affordability. On investment variance, again, as I covered it in the earlier question, that is a significant feature of the accounts, which has various categories that some of which are economic, some of them are frankly non-economic. It's really a difference between the solvency legislation and the IFRS accounting legislation that creates some of those differences, both of which we analyze very carefully. On the matching adjustment, the matching adjustment really is, as I'm sure you're aware, a mechanism that allows annuity writers to benefit from the illiquidity.
We hold and pay out our liabilities to pensioners over many decades, and that allows us to benefit from effectively the illiquidity in the assets that we back those, and therefore, the matching adjustment impact is significant, but it's there for a reason and makes sense for a business of our type. You also mentioned sub-investment grade, just to say our balance sheet is 99% investment grade. I repeat many, many times to institutional investors, the balance sheet over many years has seen virtually no defaults, and that goes back to the global financial crisis. Its credit worthiness and monitoring is something we take very seriously. Our own efforts and the regulatory environment means that the balance sheet is very securely invested in virtually exclusively investment-grade securities.
Thank you. Do feel free to collar Andrew afterwards. Do we have any online questions?
We do. Yes, the first one is, how does Legal & General align its financing activities with international biodiversity objectives? Would L&G consider committing through the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge?
Thank you. I think we had this question in advance.
That's right.
We are pleased that we were able to give quite a full response in advance as well. Can I ask Nilufer, who's a board member who takes a close interest in these topics, if there's anything she'd like to add?
Thank you, John. Do I have to.
We've got a second question.
As John says, we have actually answered this question already for the particular shareholder, but the shareholder was keen that the room also had the answer to the question. I wanted to start by saying that we recognize that the natural environment is fundamental to the long-term health of our social, economic, and financial systems, and that preventing nature loss is essential to mitigate and adapt to the impacts of climate change. Addressing the two parts of the question, we are committed to supporting the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, which was adopted in Montreal in 2022. Our nature and social outcome strategy, which is set out in our Climate and nature report, is aimed at mobilizing capital for biodiversity through international finance.
In terms of committing to the Finance for Biodiversity Pledge, we are already a signatory to that pledge, and our Climate and nature report sets out many of the initiatives in this area that we are involved with. Happy to take further questions on that after the meeting.
Thank you, Nilufer. I think we have one more online question.
We do. The question is, although it is great to be able to promote from within, does the number of senior members of the executive team departing expose the group?
Thank you for the question. Actually, my assessment, for what it's worth, would be that the team we now have at the top of the company is certainly as strong as it's ever been at any point in my chairmanship. I think it's actually in great shape. I don't know whether there has been a particularly unusual level of turnover. If you take a particular case, so for example, Jeff Davies was our CFO for 9 years. That's, I think, quite a long stint for a major FTSE 100 CFO role. He wanted to move on. He did so very much with our best wishes.
To be in a position where we had available within the team Andrew, who was always clear to us was going to be a very compelling candidate at some point to be CFO, was, I think, testament to very strong succession planning in the Group. Andrew having run Institutional Retirement, we were extremely lucky to have Gareth Mee available within the Company and clearly ready to take on that role. I think that's a testament to the pipeline. We will always have a mix of internal and external people at the top of the Company, and I think that's really very healthy. Coming back to the room, further questions. This gentleman here.
Good morning. My name is Cliff Waite. I'm a long-term shareholder, over 30 years. I've asked questions at previous AGMs. I'm a member of ShareSoc, the individual shareholder society. I'd like to say how pleased I am to see that we have a proper physical AGM here, plus the hybrid option. I think this is the best of both worlds. I hope that you can confirm that you will be continuing in that same physical vein, or at least your successor Chairman, Scott Wheway. L&G has an important role to set to other U.K. PLCs. I'm concerned about virtual AGMs, which feel increasingly like a tactical retreat from accountability and having to answer difficult questions. LGIM, the asset management division has an important role as a key investor in many U.K. PLCs. Could you confirm that LGIM will object to any company that holds virtual-only AGMs?
Well, thank you for your compliments. I do think this format has worked well. We take our engagement with shareholders extremely seriously, and we try to do it really well. Scott will have heard your message loud and clear, no doubt. In relation to voting decisions on behalf of clients, just to be clear, that is not something in which this board or indeed Antonio can have any involvement in. It is done by a stewardship team on behalf of clients and under the governance protocols. They make their own decisions. I believe they have cast votes on these matters in some cases. My understanding is they make an assessment in the round of whether a company is taking its engagement with shareholders seriously, and they have been willing to cast votes where they have concerns. Next question, please.
Let me just check there isn't any other shareholder who wants to raise a point. Okay, back to you. Thank you.
Oh, thank you very much. Can I just say what a marvelous job you've done over the last 10 years. Thank you very much.
Thank you. As I said, you can say that as many times as you like.
Hopefully that'll let me slip questions 4 and 5 in. Just one, actually. The announcement on the 10th of July last year about the deal with Blackstone, whereby you're accessing more private credit in the U.S.A. Private credit's got a really bad rap, particularly in the U.S. Can you tell us what the controls are? Over the processes and procedures to make sure we don't get landed with a whole load of hopeless assets?
Yep.
Because it's easy to do this business when the world is on the up. When it all turns
Yeah.
potentially a disaster.
Thank you. Very understandable question. Antonio.
Yes. Thank you, Phil, for the question. Let's step back with the partnership with Blackstone. There's two aspects to it. This is one of it. I'll come at the end to the second component. We invest across our portfolio in a series of assets, but Andrew made the point earlier that we invest in investment-grade assets, both in public markets and in private markets. If you think about it, you're right, that private credit as an expression has a sort of bad reputation. You think about what is this in practice? We actually show some of these disclosures in our accounts, and you'll see it also in our annual presentation this year. We gave much more disclosure on the actual companies we're lending to. One of the examples is Amazon. We're lending to Amazon on specific assets.
Both we lend to Amazon on the public markets, but we also lend to them on private markets. We do that with the U.K. government, HMRC, other areas where we are actually lend. We're lending in the private markets exactly in the same way that we're doing in the public markets. Now, coming to Blackstone, we can do that very well ourselves in the U.K. We have the capability. We've been doing this for decades in the U.K., and we do this ourselves as L&G. In the U.S., and this is a very small portion of our balance sheet, we said that up to 10% of that exposure in the U.S., we believe that Blackstone has the right capabilities to originate the right type of assets. To reassure you, what are the controls, to your point, we approve asset by asset.
This is not Blackstone brings us a big private credit fund. Every single exposure that we have, we, as L&G, approve with our same credit underwriting standards. We imagine those types of exposures. It's a deal that Blackstone is doing, let's say, with Amazon, and we are part of that. To reassure you, it's exactly the same credit quality that we have in all of the rest of the portfolio. If you ask me, that shouldn't be called private credit, right? When people think about private credit, they're thinking about sub-investment grade private credit.
Just to touch on the second part of the partnership and why I'm very excited about the Blackstone partnership is that there's a strategic angle to this because we also have a partnership on the asset management side, where we are bringing the best of L&G with the best of Blackstone to combine that into asset management products that we then distribute to clients. That's a part that is now starting, and it will be very good for our asset management business. The previous question from the other gentleman next to you, where we are growing our asset management business and growing the profitability of that asset management business. If you think about it is the largest asset manager in the U.K., the largest alternative asset manager in the world, bringing the combined strengths of the two of us and distributing that to clients.
Thank you. I think we have some online questions.
We do, Chairman. The first is, should the sales of parts of business and share buyback create a more attractive group from a share price perspective?
Well, as a general matter, we have been willing to sell businesses. In doing so, we make a combination of a strategic judgment about whether that business is important for our ongoing strategy. We make a value judgment. Is the price that we might obtain from selling a business one that's in the interests of shareholders? As a general matter, I think the sales we have made of some businesses over the years have been very good for shareholders and have allowed us to reinvest capital in pursuing what is central to our strategy. We have sold over the years our general insurance business, we've sold our with-profits business, we've sold the U.S. life business, and we've sold our house builder.
In all of those cases, I think we feel very good about the prices we were able to obtain and, as I say, our ability to reinvest that capital. In terms of going forward, I guess, Antonio, would you like to comment?
Yes, maybe just build on the point you've just made. Specifically for the U.S. protection business, we sold it for GBP 1.8 billion. Just in terms of multiples, that's 18 times the earnings, the cash that we were getting every year, which was GBP 100 million. If you think about our ability to pay the dividend and our ability to run the company, we were paid 18 times what we were receiving every year. Actually, on an earnings basis, that GBP 1.8 billion is 30 times the earnings that we were making in that business. On the back of that, we did a GBP 1 billion share buyback, which is part of what I think the question had in terms of the question of what we're doing with the proceeds of the GBP 1.8 billion. GBP 1 billion is part of the share buyback that we're doing this year.
Going forward, John, to your question, I've been very clear on what's strategic and not strategic. The big disposals are done. We have created the Corporate Investments Unit. We've sold GBP 1.5 billion of those assets. GBP 1.35 billion of that was the Cala disposal, so the house builder that, John, you've just mentioned. There's a few remaining assets within the Corporate Investments Unit, but if you think about the big numbers, it's a reasonably small number. We've sold GBP 1.5 billion. There's another GBP 500 million left. Of the big businesses, I've been very clear that the business that we now have, we have top market share positions. In many of the businesses where we are, we have more than 20% market share. I feel very comfortable that this is the right portfolio.
As shareholders, you shouldn't expect other big disposals except for what I said, those very small businesses that are still within the Corporate Investments Unit.
Thank you. Next question.
Global volatility is up. L&G's price range has been GBP 218-300 in recent years. Does L&G need to increase reserves to cover shadow banks, crashes, et cetera? The shareholder believes there will be one in the next 5 years.
Well, look, we are very vigilant. I think the questioner is correct to say that there's a great deal of volatility in the macroeconomic environment. I'm not sure I caught that, but let me just attempt to answer the question. The situation in the Middle East could have significant ramifications, which we're watching extremely closely. We manage a balance sheet that is designed to be resilient to any events that the world can throw at them. We do a huge amount of stress testing as a company against all sorts of scenarios. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, we have, in my time as Chair, gone through a whole set of really quite significant shocks to the balance sheet.
In each time, I'm very proud of how the balance sheet has responded and what that shows about the disciplines in the company in terms of risk management and credit risk management in particular. As Andrew said, we have a very strong capital position. We've set out to the market a clear range for our solvency ratio, which is designed to give us a very significant buffer against any external shocks.
And we have one more-
Next online question?
We have one more online question, which is, how does the board audit committee ensure whistleblowing speak ups are dealt with in line with FCA requirements for both timely and effective investigation, a provision of feedback, and prevention of detriment to those who've raised them? What are the protocols where the speak up involves anyone in an SMF or certified role? That's a regulated role under FCA and PRA, either management or non-executive.
Thank you very much for the question. It's a really important issue. It's very, very important that when there are any whistleblowing allegations, that they are handled in the right way, in a way where it's very clear that anyone who wishes to raise concerns can do so safely and without fear of any consequences. We can and do do that. We have very clear procedures for doing that. The board has reviewed those procedures and made continuing improvements to the process to make sure that we handle these things in the best way possible. We have a board member, Clare Bousfield does this role currently, who takes a close interest in this, has a responsibility for assuring herself on behalf of the board that we are dealing with these things in the right way.
I would just say as a general matter that they can be difficult when these things arise, but you can also learn very, very important things through concerns that are raised. We approach this, I hope, both in a spirit of, I hope, approaching of the right values, but also in a spirit of continuous improvement. Actually, it's something from which we can benefit. No more questions. Do we have other questions? Yes. In the room. Thank you.
Good day. Welcome all new board members. My name is Leon Bonnie, and I always ask.
Sorry. Can we get you a microphone? Sorry.
Huh?
Can we get you a microphone? This lady has a microphone.
He does have it.
Can you hear me now?
Yes.
Good. Thank you. I say welcome the board and everything, and the retirement of the chairman. This question is 2-part, but it's really one question. How do you engage so as to encourage the share price to rise? There's only one. You have to realize the intrinsic value. 2 ways. You either have a breakup, or 3, you have M&A, which the chief executive refused to discuss it. The very day that you refused to discuss the M&A, the share price went up between GBP 0.20 and GBP 0.26 per share. After you refused to have the discussion, the share price fall back again. You are not receiving and producing very good results. You make out that you're talking about billions here and GBP 5 billion there. 30 years ago, they're saying the same message. After Nigel Wilson left, the share price never reached back there.
The failure was on this board, led by the chairman, which you have still. Until you change that chairman, which is due very shortly, the share price would never move. You have to always have the best people in the pitch. Like the saying, if you don't have the best player, you wouldn't have the best result. Can you tell me, this one you can answer, the CEO, why did you refuse the discussion about the M&A or the breakup value of the company? You can answer that because you refused to answer that question before. Thank you.
Thank you for the question. I'm all for a new chair being able to work some magic with the share price. I think that will be excellent. I think there may be some misunderstanding. We would never refuse to discuss anything. I think the press article to which you're referring, well, my brief tells me that I should describe it as speculative. I could think of other adjectives to use. Actually, what you'll find in that article, if you read it carefully, is a clear on the record interview with Antonio, who spoke very, very clearly about our views. He's quoted quite correctly in that article as saying, "There is absolutely nothing of which we're aware in terms of any proposal to buy the company or break us up." The way we approach this is to start with the view that we should listen to our shareholders.
We should lay out to our shareholders a clear, compelling strategy that they support, which we have done, and they do. We then have the challenge of delivering against that strategy, which we're engaged in, and I think demonstrably, we are making real progress. To work to attract new investors into the stock, which I think we are working extremely well and hard on. I think that Antonio, Andrew, we also have a fantastic new head of strategy and investor relations who I think is extremely widely respected, who's just joined the company. I think we're doing very good things on that. We will always be open to debate about strategy. We'll always be open to any views that shareholders have, and we'll listen carefully and respectfully to them. We will always act in the interests of shareholders. Next question, please. I think this gentleman there.
Sorry, just looked. My name is Dave Chowty. I am a shareholder. My question more or less relates to the question before. The board's policy is to return capital to shareholders in the form of buying back shares, and I think you mentioned billions being spent to buy back L&G shares. L&G is not the only company that does that.
The question is, that policy does not reflect on the share price. Unless you could produce evidence to correct me, I'd be glad to see it. As far as I'm aware, that policy does not help the share price. As far as I'm aware, the share price of this company has never exceeded GBP 3. It has fluctuated between GBP 2-GBP 3. At the moment, I think it's GBP 2.74 per share. Having heard the glowing report, it's not reflected in the share price.
Thank you for your question. Let me try and set out how we do this and how we think about it. Actually, our first priority for deploying capital is to invest in the business. It's not to buy back shares. Our first priority is to invest in the business. We attach enormous importance, and we know that our shareholders attach enormous importance to the dividend. The way we think about buybacks is very much in making an overall judgment about the capital position of the company and whether there is surplus capital that ought to be returned to shareholders. In making that judgment, we make a judgment that I've already described about the need for resilience against external shocks. We then listen very hard to all of our shareholders' views on the balance of distribution through dividends, buybacks, and reinvestment in the company.
The thing I would say about buybacks is that it's important to remember that the shareholders who don't participate in the buyback, as a result, own more of the company, and we're delighted if shareholders choose to retain their shares, which many of them rightly do. This is something we think about very carefully. The other final point I would make on this question is it's quite important to bear in mind when looking at share price comparisons over time, also to bear in mind the very large and very consistent dividend that we have paid and that our shareholders so value very strongly. As it happens, I had this looked at the other day. In my time as chair, we have paid out a total of £12.5 billion to shareholders in my time as chair.
We know that shareholders attach a great deal of value to that, and that's not captured in the share price that you've just described. That's over and above what you see in the share price.
Can I ask a supplementary question, Chairman?
Let me see if there are any others in the room, and if not, yes, you can. Yes? Thank you.
The annual report devotes a large section on human rights.
Yeah
Modern slavery and things like that. I must say, it's torture reading it on a computer monitor. The question I was going to ask, if you invest in companies or countries that abuse human rights, how do you correct that?
How do we collect?
Well, the company.
How do we correct it?
How do you extricate yourself from that?
It's a very good question. First of all, we're talking here about our investments on behalf of clients. Remember that many of our clients are choosing to invest in index funds. What they are asking us to do is to invest in all the companies in the index, which can sometimes include companies about which our stewardship team, which as I mentioned, is independent of the leadership and the board, our stewardship team has concerns about. If they do have concerns, what they do is they exercise their influence as shareholders on behalf of clients through their voting decisions and through engaging with the company. Where we are investing on behalf of clients through index funds, we do not have the option of disinvesting, because then we wouldn't be matching the index.
We have to act on behalf of clients in response to the instructions they give us, which is what we do.
Yeah, that doesn't mean to say that you become, what you call, an associate of abusing human rights then.
No. Where we have concerns about human rights or indeed anything else about that company, we would act on behalf of clients to engage with the company, if necessary, through voting decisions. That's what we do.
Thank you. I don't think that's very satisfactory.
Thanks. I think we can leave. We have no more online questions. Can I just establish that we have no more questions in the room? Oh, yes, 1 here. 2 here, actually. Bye.
Thank you. Andrew Girvin, shareholder. I'll keep it simple. I can't find the page. The business that you've done with Yasuda. You sold them your protection business, your U.S. life business, but then you go on to sort of say, "And to strengthen our position with U.S. PRT." Have you sold something and then you're going back into it through this other company? What is the future of the relationship between Yasuda and yourselves? I've got one other question after that.
Okay. Well, thank you for the question. It's a very good question. We have a partnership with Meiji Yasuda, which consists of a number of things. They've taken a shareholding in L&G, which is very welcome. We, as you say, sold to them our U.S. protection business. This is a business that offered life insurance products to U.S. retail customers. We sold them that business, as Antonio's described, for a very attractive price. We do have another business in the United States, which is the U.S. PRT business, completely separate business based in a different place. That is the business that will partner with Meiji Yasuda and will be in a stronger position to compete in the U.S. market because of the strength of the Meiji Yasuda U.S. balance sheet and the L&G U.S. balance sheet.
Coming together makes that a stronger provider. We have a good deal more experience in the PRT market in the U.S. than Meiji Yasuda do. They were very attracted to that partnership. I hope that makes sense.
Okay. Can I ask one quick one? Your ETF business, what % of this is for your own internal use, and what % is for retail customers?
I think that may, unless Antonio knows the answer.
Yes. No, ETFs is really an external business for clients. What we invest internally is not an ETF. The ETF business is all for external clients.
Okay, thanks.
Yes
Thank you for the second question. On page 23, you talk about workplace savings. You've joined with 19 other major finance firms to launch U.K. retail investment campaigns, an industry-wide initiative. How well is that going, and what really are the objectives? Does it cover the question of beneficial ownership as opposed to membership of companies, making it more difficult to interact with companies?
Our workplace pension business is doing extremely well. We're very proud of the performance of that business. It's growing. It's winning new clients at quite a rate, actually. I apologize, I'm not sure I completely understood the last part of your question.
No, I can-
Yeah.
Okay. The campaign that's been launched is actually at a higher level than you described, which is, how do we encourage people in the U.K., investors, to invest more of their money. Actually, as you know, we encourage people to save more, but a lot of savings are in cash, basically, in the U.K. This is an industry-wide campaign which we are a part of, so this is not led by L&G, to help people feel more confident in the way they're investing. It addresses many different aspects of that. To your question, it's early days. It was launched a month ago. It's several years of trying to educate investors. Actually, of course, many of you here, by being here, you are invested in shares and in L&G.
Most of the people in the U.K. are not comfortable investing, and it's part of making people more comfortable. Just since we're talking about Workplace. Workplace is a very separate business. In Workplace, what we are doing, basically it's people's pensions, as you know, the defined contribution pensions. That business is growing very well, and in that case, we are investing that money ourselves. 95% of that is invested through our own asset managers. They're two very separate things. What we're doing in the campaign is helping more broadly the public. In our own Workplace business, we feel very good about that business. As John said, it grew very strongly in 2025.
Are there any more questions in the room? Yes. Gentleman here.
Thank you, Chairman, for letting me have a second go. I refer to page 102, which is the remuneration report. Where you have a 10-year table of the chief executive and the previous chief executive and their payment, a column showing the annual bonus paid out as a % of maximum. Just above it is a graph of your 10-year share price or total shareholder return performance. The graph implies to me, as a bit of an amateur statistician, that the performance wasn't all that good up until the last three years and has done rather better in the last three years.
The table of bonus payouts, which is reflected in about 10 different performance measures, which are shown on page 89, that seems to indicate that you're being tougher, or the remuneration committee is being tougher in this assessment of performance than it has in the past. I have a second question on the performance share plan. 50% of the performance metrics are based on earnings per share, which, of course, if you have share buybacks, is liable to increase. Are we making it rather easy to achieve the performance share plan targets because of the share buyback program?
Thank you. I guess your two questions may be intention. I don't know. Laura is going to answer them, as she is Chair of the Remuneration Committee.
Thank you, John, and thank you for your questions. The job of the Remuneration Committee is to ensure that we are appropriately incentivizing and rewarding our management for delivering in the long-term interests of our shareholders. I think that we have to, in doing that, find the right balance in terms of ensuring that it is competitive, but that also it is pay for performance. If I use this year as an example, we have paid out to management a bonus of about 59%. Indeed, you list the fact that it is, I think, set out on one of the pages very clearly. We think that that is a fair assessment for the performance that has been achieved. We have had a really good year in a number of respects.
One of the things that happened was that the PRT market did not grow as much as we had anticipated at the beginning of the year. When we look at performance, and we assess whether, in the round, the mechanical outcomes are appropriate, and we have concluded that, yes, they are. To your question about earnings per share and buybacks. When we set our targets in the long-term incentive, we are very clear that those include the planned and forecasted buybacks. If we do exceptional buybacks, we will consider whether, in the round, we should take account of those or not. I hope that addresses your questions.
I think if there was 1 last question, we would have time to take it. If there isn't, I'd just like to thank you all for your participation. That concludes the formal business of the AGM. I'm now declaring the 2026 AGM closed. We'll now take a short break before we convene the general meeting, which will begin at 12:30. For those of you who don't want to stay for the general meeting, lunch is already available downstairs. We have helpers available at the back of the room who will direct you there. If anyone has any further questions or would like to speak to the board or group management committee members, we will be available downstairs after the general meeting has concluded. Alternatively, you can always email or write to us. Thank you very much.