Ladies and gentlemen, it's 11:00 A.M. I welcome you very much to the 2026 annual general meeting of Vesuvius plc. I confirm we have a quorum of shareholders present. I declare this meeting duly constituted and open. Before we start the business of the meeting, I will ask you to ensure that your mobile phones are switched off, please. If there is an emergency, it may be necessary for us to leave the room. If you hear a fire alarm, it won't be a test. If one sounds, I will ask you to leave the room in an orderly manner via the nearest exit, which is probably over there or over there. The staff here will assist you if practical. We will reconvene the meeting as soon as the emergency is over. Thank you very much.
With your permission, I will take the notice convening the meeting dated 27th of March 2026 as read. Any comments? I can take it as read. Thank you very much. I would like to introduce myself and my fellow directors. I'm Carl-Peter Forster. I'm your Chairman. Starting at my far right are Carla Bailo, who is an Independent Non-Executive Director. We have Robert MacLeod, who is an Independent Non-Executive Director and the Chair of the Audit Committee. Eva Lindqvist, who is an Independent Non-Executive Director and will take on the RemCo chair position after our Non-Executive Board Member, Italia, has stepped down at the end of this AGM. I'll come to that in a minute. Mark Collis is our Chief Financial Officer, and Patrick is our Chief Executive . To my far left is Ping Yee Au, who is also an Independent Non-Executive Director.
Friederike Helfer, who is a Non-Executive Director partner of Cevian Capital, our largest shareholder. Next to me is our Company Secretary, Henry Knowles. There will be an opportunity for you to meet the directors after the meeting. Coming back to our colleague, Italia Boninelli, our Non-Executive Board Member. She's not able to be with us today. She's stepping down from our board at the end of this AGM, and I would like to express my and the board's significant thanks to her for her contribution to Vesuvius throughout her tenure, and in particular in her role as chair of the Remuneration Committee. We wish her well for the future and very good health. This morning, we issued a trading update covering the company's performance to the 30th of April 2026. A copy is available on our website.
I would like to take the opportunity on behalf of the board to thank all our people for their significant contribution to the continued success of the company. Before putting the resolutions to the meeting proceeding to vote, I would like to invite questions from shareholders on any of the resolutions proposed. Are there any questions? That doesn't seem to be the case. Thank you. We will now proceed to vote on the resolutions. In line with past practice, voting will be by way of a poll rather than a show of hands. This means that all votes will be counted according to the number of shares held. I would like to appoint Stuart Miller of our registrar's Equiniti as the poll scrutineer. The resolutions are set out in full in the notice of meeting, and a summary of each resolution is displayed on the screen.
Resolutions 1-16 are ordinary resolutions and therefore require a simple majority of more than 50% of votes cast to be voted in favor for the resolution to be passed. Resolutions 17-20 are special resolutions and therefore require 75% of the votes cast to be voted in favor for the resolution to be passed. Those of you attending and entitled to vote will have been given a voting card at registration.
If you have already voted by proxy and do not wish to change your vote, then you do not need to complete a voting card. If you have not voted or if you wish to change your vote, please complete the voting card and place it in the ballot box as you leave the room at the end of the meeting. The poll will close when the meeting room is clear.
The results of the poll will be announced later today via a regulatory announcement to the stock exchange and will be posted on the company's website. I now propose formally that each of the resolutions set out in the notice of meeting and listed on the voting cards be put to the meeting as separate resolutions. The poll is now open. Please complete your poll cards. I can tell you that all the proposed resolutions were supported by a substantial margin based on proxy votes submitted by shareholders in advance of the meeting. These percentages, which are provisional figures only, are shown on the screen now.
Thank you for attending the meeting in person or via the webcast. I would also like to thank those shareholders who could not attend but submitted their votes by proxy. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes the formal business. I declare the meeting closed.
Thank you very much for your attendance.
Very good.
Thank you.
Thank you very much.