Good afternoon, everybody. It is a joy for me to wish you all welcome to this year's annual general meeting of Telenor ASA. My name is Bjørn Erik Næss. In accordance with Section 512 of the Public Limited Liability Companies Act and the Articles of Association, Section 8.1 first, eight first subsection. It is I who, as the Chair of the Corporate Assembly and company, opens and chairs this general meeting. With me on the panel is Chair of the Board, Gunn Wærsted, Group CEO, Sigve Brekke, and CFO, Tone Hegland Bachke. This annual general meeting will take place both physically and digitally through a login on the Lumi solution of DNB. It's also possible to follow the annual general meeting via webcast in Norwegian and English. A link and information concerning logins have been posted on Telenor's website.
I'd like to start by giving you some practical information. Shareholders who take part physically will be able to log on and vote electronically in the same way with their own computer, smart telephone, or a tablet as shareholders who take place online. Shareholders who participate digitally will be watching a webcast of the general meeting, which is shown at the bottom of the screens as a button that you press on direct sending or broadcast. Alternatively, the webcast will take up half of your screen on the right-hand side. The webcast may be enlarged or reduced in size by pressing the various and relevant symbols. When you log on, you will see the number of shares you have as your voting shares, and you may choose the language you want the system to use.
There are four icons at the top, which you can choose. Home, which will give you additional information about how this works. I recommend that you read the text that is posted there. Shareholders who wish to ask questions or comment on any of the items on the agenda may do so in writing by choosing Messages. I'd like to point out that you will be identified by name, but not the number of shares you hold. Your comments will be visible for all shareholders who are logged on. The documents will give you a copy of the notice. By clicking on Voting, you'll be able to vote on each point on the item, each item on the agenda today. You can vote, give your vote by clicking on the icons for, against, or abstain for each individual element.
Note that shareholders who already have given, granted a proxy, voted in advance or given instructions will not be able to vote on the items. Meeting now is considered to be opened. We'll now move on to item number two, which concerns the registration of represented shareholders and proxies or powers of attorneys. We have now closed for additional shareholders to log on now. DNB have carried out a count of those present and the shareholders present and their proxies. A list will be referred to as soon as it is available. The annual general meeting will deal with the items and follow the agenda as shown on screen now.
The chair of the board and myself have received powers of attorney, and with the voting instructions and powers of attorney where the voting have been left to the assigned person. Where the voting has been left to the chair of the board or me, we will vote for the proposal from the board and these proxies will be reflected in the voting results, which will be available as an addition and appendix to the mini- meeting minutes. We have the following share of capital. We have 668,902,000 shares represented in the form of advance votes. We have 187 million shares represented by instructions to this.
We have 14 shareholders who are taking place digitally and represent 755,208,970 shares. Here in the auditorium, we have five shareholders who are voting for 7,281 shares. In total, this gives us 1 billion, 822 million votes, which comprises 73.9% of the total share capital. We will now then move to the individual items on the agenda. We will now have an opportunity to vote on the items, which has now been opened, and we'll move to the first item, which is the approval of the notice of the annual general meeting and the agenda.
The notice of the current annual general meeting has been sent to all shareholders with a known address on the 19th of April, 2023, in compliance with Section 510 of the Public Limited Liability Companies Act and the company's Articles of Association. The notice, the other documents referred to in the notice, proposals for motions and the proposed agenda and the company's Articles of Association, have been made available on the company's website in accordance with Section 8 of the Articles of Association. I cannot see that we've received any comments or questions relating to item three. I would then notify you that an opportunity to vote for item three will soon be closed, so ask that any shareholders who have not yet vote or wish to change their vote must do so now, almost immediately.
For those of you who did not catch the explanation of how you can vote digitally, this is also written on the information page which you're now logged into. If you click on the home symbol on your screen, this will take you back to the information page. We will just wait for a moment so that everybody has an opportunity to vote, and would notify that you can vote on the remainder of the items as well until each individual item has been closed. We will wait for 30 or so seconds to ensure that the voting takes place. We cannot see that there are any comments. The item under discussion and the voting has now been closed, and this item is considered now to have been adopted.
We now move to item four, which is the election of a representative to sign the minutes of the annual general meeting and with the chair of the meeting. Under section five-16 of the Public Limited Liability Companies Act, the chair of the meeting and at least one other person shall be elected by the annual general meeting to sign the minutes. We propose that the representative, Bjørn Tore Sommer, representative for the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries, be elected. We cannot see here now that we have received any questions or comments, we will very shortly close the voting on this item. Anybody who has not yet voted must do so now. We will wait so that everybody has an opportunity to do so. The voting is now being concluded.
The count up shows that the election of Bjørn Tore Sommer has been adopted. Bjørn Tore Sommer is then elected to sign the minutes together with the chair of the meeting. We now move to item five, which is a report by the chair of the board and the CEO, group CEO. Gunn Wærsted, the chair of the board, will begin. If you have any questions through the report, both from the chair of the board and the group CEO, we will gather these up at the end after both have given their presentation. Please, Gunn, please go ahead.
Thank you. Dear shareholders, let me begin by stating that 2022 was yet another eventful year for Telenor. With operations in many countries, both in Asia and in the Nordic countries, there will always be things that are happening and occurring.
This year has been particularly important, with a view to staking out our strategic course. The development of our strategy up until 2025 and the pertinent review and decisions concerning the plans that need to be carried out in order to achieve these strategic goals have taken up a lot of the time of the board in 2022.
The board, together with the administration, have worked particularly thoroughly in order to stake out a strategic course and highlight strategic targets for this year that we've just finished. For this reason, we're very happy and pleased with the shareholders and coworkers have given clear and positive feedback about the strategy that's been presented at the Capital Markets Day on September 2022. Share price developments for Telenor shares in 2022 were weak and negative up until Capital Markets Day.
There's little solace in the fact that other international companies in the telecom sector were also struggling during the same period. It's all the more joyful now to see that the share price trend has been positive, both absolutely and relatively, in the period after presentation of the new strategy. Far this year, Telenor share has been one of the most positive shares on Oslo Stock Exchange.
We take that as a clear sign that our strategy has been understood and accepted. However, this also creates expectations. It's the case that in the planning and the implementation of the plans, the most important and demanding aspects lie. 2023 is a year where our focus in the organization shall be and is in implementing the plans we have put down, laid down.
I would say that the organization is well on its way, and it's important that this work continues unabated. It became clear during our work with the strategy that a change in organization of our operations would be expedient. Sigve Brekke will come back to this in his presentation, so let me just mention the four business areas that Telenor has, is now organized under from the year-end.
Telenor Norden and Telenor Asia will, as separate business areas, be better positioned than ever before to serve their unique customer requirements across their own very different markets. Telenor Infrastructure has been established to develop values in the critical infrastructure of Telenor. Telenor Amp will strengthen and reinforce Telenor's competitive power by developing and investing in companies relating to its core operations.
The boards of the opinion, the new organization will give clearer priorities, greater market and customer focus, a clearer corporate responsibility, management responsibility, greater innovative power. At the same time as the overarching way of operating Telenor's main operations will and its values remain in place. Of other matters that we should be mentioned when we now speak about our status for last year, is the implementation of the two mergers in Asia, the establishment of CelcomDigi in Malaysia and True in Thailand, respectively.
They required a huge amount of resources and have been very time-consuming in achieving this. The board is convinced that the establishment of these two very large companies in each market will create value for the customers and shareholders.
In order to operate the digitalization in Malaysia and Thailand by becoming even stronger partner for private individuals, companies, and society in its entirety. Now that all the formal aspects are in place, our focus will be on delivering planned synergies and retaining the strong market positions that have been created. The new companies will make Telenor even more well-equipped to deal with market opportunities and risk within the respective markets and across the region. Size and advantages of scale are crucial to our industry. For this reason, creating a number one telecom operator in these two important markets was a considerable priority for us. With the exception of Pakistan, our partially owned companies in Asia are now market leaders in their respective markets. Also important was the sale of 30% of Telenor Fiber to American KKR and Oslo Pensjonsforsikring.
This sale clearly show the values that are available in the infrastructure. At the same time as the commission from the sale secured investment capacity, which Telenor does require, in particular, to invest in the rollout of fiber networks in Norway and other companies, and the development of building out of 5G that takes place in most markets. Telenor is now in 2023 stands in a different position than it was when I was here a year ago. We are certain that we have presented a good basis for a transformational process which will enable Telenor to create greater values for its customers and shareholders. At the same time as we foster diversity, security, and equal rights, equal opportunities in the workplace.
We have taken crucial steps in order to resolve these challenges that we are facing, both for the industry in its entirety and for Telenor as a company. At the same time, the company is well-positioned to benefit from the opportunities which occur in a time with disruptive developments in most industries. Telenor has delivered its ambitious digitalization targets, which make it possible for us to use the newest technology to deliver products and services which fulfill changing customer needs. At the same time, we will ensure that our customers have a secure and inclusive experience they can trust in. Telenor creates or maintains its own obligations for reduction of global warming by cutting emissions of climate gas in our own operations, and by making requirements on our suppliers.
By picking up on both the challenges and the opportunities that lie before us, I'm certain that Telenor will remain a leading player in the telecommunication industry also in the years to come. I've now been seven and a half years as chair of the board in Telenor, and this means that I'm the longest-sitting chair of the board in the company since it was listed on the stock exchange 22 years ago. I will now withdraw after this annual general meeting. These have been seven and a half demanding, exciting, and very interesting years. At first, when you look back and see everything that's been done over the last years, really do understand how much it has occurred.
I won't bore the auditorium with by listing at all the various, all these matters, but I would like to highlight only the importance of simplification of company's corporate portfolio, digitalization of operations, work on establishing the values and principles for corporate governance, sustainability and goals for responsible business operations, and the work in developing a corporate culture characterized by customer proximity, openness, and good working climate. I'm proud of the fact that we together have achieved what we have achieved, and I'm optimistic because Telenor is now facing standing on a sound foundation to deliver for the future. Let me, in conclusion, thank the management of Telenor, its union operatives, and all their coworkers for the work they've done, the hard work and their enthusiasm.
Thank you, Gunn, for your presentation. For your orientation, there will be an election of new board members and chair of the board. It will take place.
Later to the meeting of the corporate assembly. We have CEO Sigve Brekke, who present the company's activity, strategy, and priorities. As mentioned, we will await the answers to any questions, or we will await the questions after we have heard the presentation of the CEO. Please go ahead, Sigve.
Thank you. To Erik and Gunn, we also have to thank you. You thanked us. Thank you for the good cooperation to you as the chair of the board and the entire board during this seven and a half year period. It's very nice to see more shareholders than what I've seen in a long time. There's something about the digital aspect that leaves something. Now, when I look at you, this is a bit like before COVID, welcome to all of you.
I thought I would say a few words about what we, what we do. I will look a bit in the rearview mirror, but mostly I will look ahead. This is Telenor, the way it looks today. As you know, we are present in four Nordic countries. Finland was the last country where we acquired something. We have about 10 million customers in the Nordics.
A clear number one in Norway, number two in Sweden and Finland, and number two also in Denmark. We have our Asian activities. As Gunn said, we are number one in the markets to above 50% market share. In Thailand and Malaysia, we have 50%. In Bangladesh. We are in the process of looking at whether we can find a bit more long-term solution also in Pakistan.
Pakistan is the only market in Asia where we need to do something. The 215 + 10, that's 225 million customers in total. With that, we are one of the really big global telecom operators. It's a bit cool when I compare Telenor to the other big ones. We talk about those who come from the USA, those who are from China, from India, the really big markets with big home markets, domestic markets. Telenor is the only one among the top 15 global telecoms that comes from a small domestic market and has had no other advantage with regard to expansion than its knowledge. This is an industry that undergoes a lot of change. This is an industry that had a very good growth by connecting evermore people to mobile phones for the first time.
Now that everybody has a mobile phone, we see the next step for us, the next growth journey will be to participate in the digitalization in society that we observe. There's the international competition. We compete not only against Telia and Norway, compete with Google, Facebook, TikTok, all of the global players. Things also happen very much faster now. In addition to this, we cannot do everything on our own anymore. We need partners. Gunn said that there's been a journey her time as a chair of the board. She joined this about the same time as myself. The three steps that we have done is to make Telenor participate in the future. It is simplification, is to get out of VimpelCom, that is Eastern Europe.
We also got out of India, which was a market that became too demanding. We simplified the structures. The next step was to start modernizing Telenor and using digital tools, that is new technology that could make us run the companies more efficiently. We also sold our participations in the four countries in Central Europe and used that money for buying shares in Finland to have a more solid Nordic position. We also reorganized ourselves. We had a cooperation with Schibsted. We were together with Schibsted and with marketplace solutions in South America and other places, also in Asia, like FINN.no in Norway. We left that, and we concentrated on our current holdings in a company in Singapore. The pandemic struck, and the two past years have been tough for Telenor.
The first thing that happened was that we had the military coup in February 2021 in Myanmar. Myanmar was one of the operations that really were elements of pride. If there was any place that our vision of making a difference in society really could be put into practice, well, it was in Myanmar. We opened the country into something that could have become a democracy. In addition, it was good business. When we had to give Myanmar away, practically speaking, that was a very sad situation, also financially. At that point in time, Myanmar was worth between NOK 20 billion and NOK 25 billion, and it amounted to about NOK 20 to NOK 25 in the share price. Financially, it was also demanding. We were not even finished with Myanmar before we were hit by Pakistan.
The situation in Pakistan became ever more demanding. There's a political crisis and economic and financial crisis, a currency crisis, and that, of course, affects us as well. What perhaps hit us even harder than those two things was COVID and how the pandemic struck in Asia. Here in the Nordics and in Europe, we had a demanding situation, but business-wise, things were going pretty okay. In Asia, markets closed down completely. We have these cash prepaid cards. Customers, they have to fill up the cards every week. When these points closed down, no tourists came, no workers came to different countries, then we really had a downward trend in Asia, and we're still not back to the levels where we were, tourists, et cetera.
The sum of this was very negative, and as Gunn said, this also influenced our share price negatively last year. On the basis of this, we had a Capital Markets Day when now that we have exited the pandemic, we have simplified to know what do we do. We have the four areas mentioned by Gunn. Behind this, we've had for 20 years in Telenor is an integrated business model. We have had everything internally within Telenor. We have had done distribution, we have rolled out networks, we have had customer contacts on board. This has been done inside the company. What we've tried to do now is to split the integrated model somewhat so that we can secure more focus on infrastructure activities, to which I shall revert.
More focus and being closer to the markets where we are and a separate structure in Asia, a separate one in the Nordics, and also more focus on what we would call a per tenant services. This was well received when we presented this at the Capital Markets Day. Important to us, was also to state that the way we will do this is both to be able to create future growth. We want to continue to modernize, digitalize, and reduce our costs so that we will have sufficient cash flow to continue our dividend policy. A bit about each of these four areas. Here we have the two Asian mergers, and here we have entered into partnerships with others. To the left, you see Malaysia, where we joined forces with a competitor.
We have a bit more than 30% ownership share. We call this a merge of equals. We have the same ownership of both partners. We have put together a new company, which is the best of the two companies together. This is a big company, 20 million customers in Asia. The corporate value is about NOK 150 million on the Malaysian stock exchange. We have a book profit of NOK 53 billion. We worked through this. We worked on this through the pandemic. This was a lot about partnership. There were many rounds we had to do, many visits to our future partners in Malaysia to make this happen. We also managed to create a bigger company. We in Thailand, we have 55 million customers. The market value is NOK 89 billion.
It's lower than the one in Malaysia because we have some debt, and we also have a book profit of NOK 20 billion. These are two major mergers that we need to make work. In Thailand, we have 22,000 employees in the new company, and we're going to build a new corporate culture. We have to make this work in a robust way, where we use Telenor's governance and Telenor's compliance systems. We now show that we are obtaining growth in the Nordics. This is a slide that I showed at the quarterly presentation last week. Here you see the growth of revenues in the four Nordic countries. Here you see three. We have had a growth of about 5%, three quarters in a row. Of that 5%, most still are data packages, data connectivity.
40% of that growth is also now services that are on the top of those data services or data packages, like insurance services or security services. We now offer a service across all our Nordic markets, to give an example, that can protect your ID. If somebody tries to get your BankID, your identity, other things you use ID for, we help to protect, and we tell if someone is trying to attack, and we help you get the ID back. Insurance companies, you can insure your mobile phone, the screen of your mobile phone, et cetera. Those services represent 40% of the growth that you see here. We are very proud of this because almost no other mobile operators do this. They focus on selling data connectivity.
We do that as well, we are capable of adding growth to that. What we work on in the Nordics is to continue growth, and we also continue modernization. I believe all of you have experienced this firsthand when you have put copper infrastructure behind us. Copper infrastructure is something that has served us well for more than 100 years. That's where we have the home phones, and also internet to a lot of our customers. We decided four years ago to put that completely behind us and instead focus on future, a future digital foundation, and we have done this now for four years. We have visited, literally speaking, all of the municipalities in Norway several times, and we've tried to handle all of the customer cases to the best of our ability.
We have helped our customers transition into new solutions, be that fiber or mobile broadband. We're the first ones to do this in Europe, and this makes us capable of being very robust with regard to a further digitalization. You have infrastructure. We have a separate company for that now. Infrastructure is about three fields. We have the physical towers, what you see all around Norway. We have about 20,000 of those towers in the Nordics. 8,500 of those are in Norway. These are towers that we use ourselves, but we also let others rent capacity there or lease capacity. When Telia or ice build out their infrastructures in Norway, we let them be leaseholders in our towers, and we manage to get good growth on those towers by having more external customers. The second is fiber.
Fiber in Norway, as Sigve Brekke said, we sold 30% of that. We got about NOK 10 billion for that. We used one-third to pay this back to you as shareholders through our share buyback program, and about NOK 7 billion we use with our partners in investing in more fiber. The third is data centers. We have 8 data centers at Telenor-owned across the Nordics, and we are looking at the possibilities of possibly entering into partnerships to exploit that possibility or options better. We have Telenor Amp. Perhaps a bit strange, this name, but it's what we call a pertinent activities. We have 16 companies under this umbrella, and we estimate them to have a market value of about NOK 12 billion-NOK 15 billion.
What you see with the Telenor Amp there is 100% wholly owned companies that did very well in the first quarter. Telenor Lincs is a company that operates. Well, they buy and sell international traffic. When you call somebody in a different country or if you are abroad roaming, that service is serviced by Linx. They also do SMS services that they sell to us. If you're going to verify who you are, we can verify that through an SMS if you buy some services from the global content providers. That's another example. They now have 125 million customers. So they sell these services also to other companies than Telenor. We have Telenor Connexion. It's a Swedish company that does IoT, the Internet of Things, that is connecting physical objects, not people. You have about 20 million customers.
It's the same cars we have, for instance, in all of the Volvo trucks globally. They have Telenor SIM cards now. Now we're moving also into the real estate sector, being able to manage buildings digitally and also a number of other fields. The third part here is Telenor Maritime. That's a company based in Arendal, in Norway. It deals with offshore connectivity solutions. We are dominant on the cruise ship market in Northern Europe, and we're also moving into the fishing fleet, and we serve connectivity to vessels out at sea. Within these fields, well, we also have Telenor Satellite. We also own some satellites that give us a quite good cash flow.
All of these companies, well, some of them will be further developed. Especially we want to have a Nordic leading position within IoT, that is connecting physical objects, and as regards to security. Part of this will be done in partnership, and part of this will be sold if we feel that others would be better owners than ourselves. As Gunn said, after we came out with this strategy at the Capital Markets Day, we've had a pretty positive share price development. It took some time. If you look at left here, that's when we had the Capital Markets Day. It took some time before we started receiving trust that we could actually deliver on what we presented.
That is, after we demonstrated that we had growth in the Nordics and that we managed to carry out the two big mergers in the Asian region. After that, there's been a positive development. Now finally, one of the really big opportunities we have, and also we have a great societal responsibility, is within security. Those of you who looked at the eight o'clock news last night, there was a fantastic, like, publicity for Telenor because the security authorities warned Norwegian companies and consumers with regard to all of the security threats that attack both private and public sectors in Norway in a systematic way. They interviewed Telenor, "What has Telenor done?" It sounded like almost only Telenor deals with these things in Norway, and that's almost true because we're pretty big in this sector.
When we look ahead, we have a lot more things on the internet. People are connected, things are connected, there's a chance to protect both data and the IT infrastructure. This is a growing challenge, this is also linked to digitalization. If you can't have secure solutions, you can't have digitalization. You also have climate and environment. If Norway and the world are going to reach climate goals, we need to implement digital solutions. Telenor is in the midst of the possibilities of being able to deliver on this. The triangle you see here is something we focus on both within our sustainability agenda and in our corporate social responsibility, also with regard to growth opportunities.
Here you see a bit of what we actually do. At the bottom of the triangle, we use a lot of resources on protecting our own operation. We have a separate center here, both at Fornebu and at Arendal in Norway. They do this on behalf of all of the eight companies of Telenor. Here is where we supervise what we do in eight different countries, and we have this in-house competence, and we can then sell this competence to others. We do this at three different levels. At the private customer level, we sell the kind of services that I mentioned before, ID solution. We protect you if you use public wireless networks.
We have about 300,000 customers in Norway who have bought that solution, we have rolled this out also in the other Nordic countries. We have a separate platform solution for small and medium-sized businesses to protect them against anybody being able to entering their IT systems through the Internet. We also do this in a more advanced way with the big companies and also the public sector. We have more than 100 customers where we help them to build robust IT systems, and we also monitor them 24 hours around the clock. This is a position that we have adopted, it's within this field we want to become a leading player in the Nordics.
Some of this we will do organically, that is build, this gradually, perhaps we also have to look at whether we have to join forces with others in some respects. Well, one more thing. Gunn also mentioned our sustainability agenda, ESG, which is the English abbreviation. The E is about emissions reductions. Although in 2019 we stated that we want to become climate neutral in the Nordics in 2030. We are well on our way to reaching that goal. We also said that we are going to reduce our e-emissions in Asia by 50% within 2030.
We're perhaps the first one in Asia to say so because this is demanding in our Asian operations, and it's because we depend on the electricity, the grid, that we get the electricity, and when this is produced with coal or other polluting sources of energy, it's difficult to reach that goal. Here we have to work systematically. We look at how can we, together with the authorities, provide positions of renewables players, and get them into that market. We have said we want to become net zero also in Asia within a certain number of years, and we now work at finding out when that can be. If you look on the right here, we have also said that in addition to cleaning our own house, we also want to work with our subcontractors.
We have tens of thousands, 10,000 subcontractors at Telenor. We look at how can we make them commit to an emissions agenda where they reduce their carbon footprint. The goal is within 2025, 68%. Within 2025, 68%, that is totality of the money used in the contracts that we have with our suppliers. We are on our way to reaching this goal. This is an extensive effort. If you want to be a supplier of Telenor, you have to commit to such an agenda. S is about the social responsibility part. We train our customers and others in digital competence. That is quite simply what has to do with security, safety, and also things like us having filters in our networks against pornography, for instance. We have G, governance, the governance tool.
We have worked a lot on how to make sure that you can operate on Telenor standards, even if you're in partnerships where we don't have control. That was a very important discussion on the board before entering into the partnerships in Malaysia and Thailand. I thought I would close by giving an example of how we take out these values in practice. This is an ad, a commercial from Norway. It's about cyberbullying. This is a campaign that we have run for many years in Norway. We also run this now in the other Telenor companies. We enter into a classroom situation.
We sit down with the fifth and sixth graders and we explain to them what is the danger of, for instance, sharing photos and videos on net, what are the dangers involved with cyberbullying, and what is the reverse side of the coin of people becoming dependent on their mobile phones. I just thought I would show you this short commercial.
Do you think that you should have another portion? You are so fat. Are you full already? What are you doing?
I'm just relaxing. I'm so tired.
Let me see what's under your duvet. Come on.
Many young people are bullied and feel pressured through Internet. The Red Cross and Telenor has developed Use Your Head, Use Your Common Sense. Read more about how you can take this year's most important conversation at useyourhead.no. That's it. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your review, Sigve. As I said, we can now open for any questions, comments, both to the Chair of the Board's report and the Group CEO report here in the auditorium. Just give you a little bit of time if you wish to prepare anything. Excuse me. Torstein Endrebu. Thank you for a very interesting review. I'd like to firstly boast about your customer service. I have used broadband and mobile phones, and it usually works, but occasionally I do need a customer consultant, so that works very well. I hope you won't cut back on that. It's difficult other places to get hold of people to speak to. I'd also like to come back to the Asian operations you both spoke about, which had to do with political risk.
One understands that there are major cultural differences between Nordic culture and what happens in Asia. I wonder perhaps if you could say a little bit more about the political risk. You mentioned Pakistan, Bangladesh, major values and assets there and huge revenues. What type of risk are you thinking of? That's one question.
Secondly, I see there are huge gross revenues. What about the net revenues here, earnings? Perhaps there are people who cannot pay their bills. Perhaps the net is marginal. If you could comment on that in the different countries in Asia. My final question or comment is the geopolitical aspects. To what extent you mentioned, how will that affect operations both here in the Nordic countries and otherwise in Telenor's operations? Thank you. Sigve. I don't know which one of you would like to respond. Well, there are many questions.
Thank you for good questions. Customer service. Well, that's nice you say that. Having said that, our target really is that you should not ring customer service, that things do actually work. We work very systematically in trying to achieve this. We are trying to eradicate the COBR operations. We are now focusing on a main project, which is focus that you as a customer meet Telenor in one go, whether you're a fiber cable customer, whether you're a mobile customer, you would meet Telenor as one company. We have several IT issues, many different systems that don't speak to and can communicate with one another. This is an agenda we do have to streamline the way in which we're perceived by our customers.
We see many customers do wish to speak to people, so our customer traffic, to our customer traffic, they wish to speak with us digitally, but we will maintain a physical contact that you have people you can speak to. As regards political risk, well, there is a political risk. It exists in all of our Asian markets. That's something we've been working on since we came into Asia and launched in Asia 20 years ago. One thing we do then is that we have been very focused on doing things in our way. I would say in the Asian markets, we have respect where Telenor is involved. We have values that we are not permitting corruption. We appreciate our coworkers. We have trade union organizations in Malaysia and in Bangladesh.
We use our values that we take with us from Norway, and we import them into the market, which means that both our customers, authorities, and also the authorities appreciate that we are not only people who act in a responsible way, but we increase this feeling of responsibility. Secondly, we work on with our stakeholders. We speak to the authorities. We speak to other important partners in these societies. When we are now involved in a partnership in Malaysia and Thailand, that also reduces risk because we have partners who are local, who can assist us and help us stand more robust against any intervention from the authorities. As regards Pakistan and Bangladesh, there is political risk.
What we've seen over the last 20 years is that, to a large extent is, that the risk, it's easy to attack telecoms in a way. It's easy to implement levy new taxes and to take us on that. We are trying to achieve better predictability. This is something, of course, that we are very concerned with, as we've discussed all the time with the board of directors. We have our risk map indicating things we need to work on. The regulatory risk is everywhere, including in the Nordic countries. There are no operators in Europe that are so thoroughly regulated as Telenor. I think there are only one or two places where they have more of this than in.
In Norway, we have access who as a provider can buy our wholesalers from us. We have regulations there. We have regulations on fiber. It's a completely regulated system, which of course is something when we work with the regulators on this. The security regulation also appear and emerge in several of our markets as well, both after COVID, but also the war in Ukraine. This is not only political risk, but we have regulatory challenges as well in all our markets. You asked about the markets. Bangladesh is a market where we have an EBITDA margin of 50%, well over 50%. That's one of our most profitable markets. That's because we have 80 million customers in Bangladesh.
What each customer pays in Bangladesh is much small, less than it is in Norway. We do have good margins, good earnings. We also have that in the other markets. If we are in where we are in demanding situation is in Pakistan. That's because inflation is above 30% now. The currency, of course, we purchase our equipments in Pakistan in U.S. dollars. That's a demanding issue. There's a great increase in energy prices on top of this as well. In Pakistan, we are struggling. That's the only market I would say we do not have good profitability. Are you happy with the responses? Any other questions? Comments? I can't see we have any on the digital front either. I'd like to thank both Sigve and Gunn for their reports, presentations.
I think now we can move on to the next item on the agenda, which is the approval of the annual accounts, annual report for Telenor ASA and the group for the financial year 2022, including the board of directors' proposal for allocation of dividend. All of these are available on the website of Telenor in accordance with Section 8 of the Articles of Association for Telenor ASA. Following information and presentation will be given under this item. CFO Tone Hegland Bachke will give you further details about selected aspects of the annual accounts. The Chair of the Board, Gunn Wærsted, will give you information about the proposal for the allocation of the annual profit. The Auditor, Anders Gøbert, is present and will respond to any questions.
All the questions will be responded to after all the presentations has been given. I now give the floor to Tone Hegland Bachke, and I'd just like to notify you that we did discover an error in note 38 of the annual report, where it's been stated approximately NOK 8 million has been allotted, too much in excess in fees for tax-related services from an external auditor in the group. This error is not of such a nature, or such an amount that it would be necessary with any correction in the annual account. I'd now like to give the floor to CFO, Tone Hegland Bachke. Please go ahead. Thank you, Bjørn Erik.
Where Sigve concluded in relation to how we've been organized, we have a structure that we've established, which means that we do have four business areas, and each of these business areas have defined value creation strategies and financial ambitions in the period up until 2025, as we presented on the Capital Markets Day. In our opinion, this organization gives us an even better starting point for value creation for shareholders in the period ahead. It may also be okay for our shareholders to know that from the first quarter of 2023, we've also changed our financial reporting and our reporting structure to base this on these four business areas. We began with this last week, and we will when we had our first quarterly presentation. Sigve spoke about sustainability as a very important area for us.
Our ambitions are, of course, not only within the financial area, but they also include what we believe are high and major ambitions as regards to sustainability, has to do with climate, social matters, and also governance. Environmental, Social, and Governance. In addition to these, reporting is an important tool. By means of reporting, we can measure how much we achieve in terms of our ambitions, and also we can make this more visible the work that we are doing. Voluntarily, we are reporting in relation to a number of standards. These are listed here. Now you should know that we are working enthusiastically to develop reporting tools and the way in which we report so that we can also be prepared for new demands may come from Norwegian authorities, from the European Union, and also from our shareholders.
I'd now like to speak about the annual financial results for Telenor ASA, for the group, but also for the shareholders of Telenor ASA. The result after tax of shareholders in 2022 was NOK 44.9 billion, which is a considerable increase from NOK 43.4 billion in 2021. The greatest effect in relation to the accounts we presented in 2021 was that we have an increase in EBITDA of NOK 2.2 billion. We also see that we had considerably higher financial costs in the tune of NOK 6.2 billion relating primarily to two aspects. There is the weaker Norwegian krona, means we have a loss on currency when we have debts in other currencies than Norwegian krona. We had approximately NOK 3.4 billion Norwegian krona, primarily in U.S. dollars.
In addition, we had interest costs of NOK 2.6 billion. On the line concerning discontinued operations, we have booked the accounting, the consolidation of Digi. This figure includes a gain of NOK 34.8 billion, which we reported in the fourth quarter of last year. In the future, the results in the new company, CelcomDigi, will be included in the accounts on the line for associated companies. The total result for 2022 added NOK 47.6 billion, of which NOK 44.9 billion was for the shareholders in Telenor ASA. I have looked at the consolidated accounts. I'd like to take you now through Telenor ASA, the parent company's results for 2022.
As you are aware, Telenor ASA is a holding company that includes a group management, number of group functions, also includes in research and development and our internal bank in Telenor. Telenor ASA's operating revenues consist essentially of sales of group services to other group companies, sale of research and development services, and other consultancy services. Telenor ASA also provide a large amount of the external funding of the group, and provide loans, and receive investments from, and deposits from group companies. Net financial items for 2022 show a result of NOK 4.3 billion, which is a reduction from NOK 26.1 billion in 2021.
This is due the high gains in 2021 are due to reorganizational effects, which gave a gain of 13 billion NOK and lower dividends and group contributions to Telenor ASA of 7.2 billion NOK in 2022 in relation to 2021. Finally, I would like to look quickly at the financial position of Telenor ASA in 2022. This shows a book value of assets totaling 199 billion NOK. We had a dividend of 13 billion NOK, which together with a result of 5.8 billion NOK, meant that the equity was reduced by approximately 7.2 billion NOK last year. The proposed dividend for the accounting year 2022 is 9.4 NOK per share, which total is around 13.2 billion NOK.
I'd like to thank, you and pass the word back.
Thank you, Tone. I will now give the floor to the Chair of the Board, Gunn Wærsted, who will present the board's proposal for allocation of the profits for the year.
Thank you. The net income for Telenor ASA in 2022 was NOK 5,766 million after tax and receipt of group contribution and dividends of NOK 7,011 million. The board proposes the following allocation. Maybe if you change the slide here. The board proposes the following allocation of the net income, NOK 5,776 million should be transferred to retained earnings. After allocation, the equity of Telenor ASA after deduction of share capital will be NOK 96,459 million. As Tone already mentioned, the board of directors proposes a total dividend payment of NOK 9.40 per share, totaling approximately NOK 13.2 billion. The dividend is as previously suggested, split into two tranches, one of NOK 5 per share and one of NOK 4.40 per share.
The first one in May and the last part in October 2023. Thank you. Let me see. As I mentioned, early on, the auditor represented by the audit firm EY and the responsible editor, Anders Skjævestad, they have audited the annual accounts of Telenor ASA, and they have presented a clean auditor's report without any reservations or comments. The corporate assembly at a meeting on the 22nd of March 2023 discussed the board's proposal for financial statements and the allocation of the net income.
The statement of the Corporate Assembly is included in the Norwegian version of the annual report on page 174, and it sounds as follows: "The Corporate Assembly recommends that the general meeting approves the board's proposal for annual accounts for 2022 for the group and for Telenor ASA as presented to the Corporate Assembly by transferring NOK 5,776 million to retained earnings and to pay a dividend of NOK 9.40 per share to be paid in two tranches of NOK 5 per share and NOK 4.40 per share, respectively in May and October 2023." I open up the floor to any questions or comments to the latest presentations. Please go ahead. Torstein Indreby , there's a question for the CFO with regards to currencies.
If I understand you correctly, we have most of the debts in dollars and euros. If the income is in local currencies, this means that you're fully hit by interest rate increases with regard to payment of interest, and you also have an ex-currency exchange effect because the Norwegian kroner has been weakened, so you get like a double whammy. How does this affect the total? Well, let's start with the composition of our debts. We have a debt with regard to currency distribution. We try to balance the values of the assets we have financed with that debt against the different currencies.
This means that we have debts in EUR, in SEK, and we have also had some debt instruments, I would say, with regard to the Thai, Thailand's THB, and we have also an item in U.S. dollars, as you said. According to the accounting principles, you can balance the values of your assets against the financing of those assets, this is based on book values. As regards EUR, if I would say there's a good balance, a one-to-one proportion, a one-to-one ratio. When you look at the profit and loss statement, so far the effects of the weakening SEK relation to EUR, those effects have been pretty limited. Over time, we have had a quite large portion of our debts in U.S. dollars.
That has been the currency where it has been logical to finance Asian assets because often there's a good correlation, or they have been well correlated to the U.S. dollars. As Sigve stated, some of these currencies weaken over time, and then we have also taken down the exposure substantially in recent years. This is something we do. We have lower dollar debts, substantially lower today than what we have had, and we will strive to have a good balance. Some of these consequences will also work their way through into the profit and loss account, while for others it will affect items on the balance sheet. We have an active attitude towards this, and we also discuss this in the risk and audit committee.
As regards interest rates, you don't escape those interest rates no matter what currency you take out your financing in. What we have done is that we have hedged a lot of our debt. We did that when the interest rates were low. About 60% of our debt has an average interest cost of 1.5%, while the remaining debt has a floating interest rate, a variable interest rate. Then we have a good balance between fixed and variable interest rates, and also this we relate to our financial costs, and this influences our financial costs. Are you happy with that reply? Any other questions or comments? I cannot see there being any comments or questions received here on the screen.
I believe we can go on to the formal adoption of the approval of the financial statements and annual report and the proposal for distribution of dividend. We propose the following resolution. Let's see if we can get up on screen. I shall read. The general meeting approved the annual accounts and the annual report for Telenor ASA and the group for the financial year 2022, including the application of the net earnings for the year and the distribution of a total of NOK 9.40 of dividend per share, divided into two trenches of NOK 5 and NOK 4.40, with ex-dividend dates on 11 May 2023 and 19th October 2023 respectively. I cannot see that we have received any questions or comments so that we will very soon close the voting on this item.
All of those who have not voted should vote now. We'll just wait a few seconds so that you will have the opportunity to vote if you have not done so already. We see that there are no comments to this item on the agenda. The agenda item has been discussed. We close the voting and this motion, this item has been adopted. Let's go on to the next item, which is number seven of the agenda. It's approval of remuneration to the company's external auditor for the audit services. I will give the floor to CFO Tone Hegland Bachke, who will give a brief information about the auditor's remuneration. The auditor's remuneration from Telenor is distributed with regard to the statutory audit and other remuneration.
As for previous years, an overview of the auditor's remuneration is included in the annual report, this time in note 38 to the consolidated accounts. The auditor's remuneration for auditing of Telenor ASA in 2022 was of NOK 6,838,144. The fee for audit encompasses as is normal. The fee for the statutory audit and a limited review of the quarterly report. For attestation services, the fee was of NOK 0.7 million, and this fee is primarily related to attestations that are mandatory under the law. For tax-related services, the auditor's fee was NOK 0.6 million, and this fee is mainly related to tax-related assistance and presentations of tax rules and consequences.
For other services, the auditor's remuneration amounted to NOK 0.1 million, and other services related mainly to review of processes, products, and suppliers, as well as financial due diligence in connection with acquisitions, sales, and other transactions. Thank you, Tone, for that presentation. Are there any questions or comments to the auditor's remuneration? I don't see there being any questions or comments. Let me just remind you that this concerns the audit of the parent company, Telenor ASA, and not any audits of the underlying subsidiary companies. We propose the following resolution then. I shall read. The general meeting approved the auditor's remuneration for work with the audit of Telenor ASA in the amount of NOK 6,838,144. As we have not received any comments, we can quickly start the voting.
Well, the proposal for re-remuneration to the company's external auditor has been adopted. Let's go on to item eight of the agenda. I shall give the floor again to Gunn Wærsted, who shall present the Board's presentation of corporate governance.
Thank you. Telenor has issued a review of the group's principles and practices for corporate governance and we're in accordance with the Accounting Act and the Norwegian re-recommendation for corporate governance and company management, NUES. This account has been provided as part of the annual re-report from the Board of Directors. The Board has reviewed and adopted this account at a Board meeting on 21st of March, 2023. The Board considers sound corporate governance as vital to ensure the greatest possible sustainable value creation over time in the best interest of its shareholders, employees, and other stakeholders.
Good and sustainable corporate governance is a key factor in order to succeed in a global market, characterized by strong competition and regulation, changes in customer needs, and technological developments. Board attaches great importance to maintaining high standards for corporate governance in all parts of Telenor Group, in compliance with both Norwegian and international generally acceptable principles and practice. Telenor's principle and practices for corporate governance are dealt with on a regular basis by the board and are reviewed formally once a year at the board and the board's People and Governance Committee. For additional details concerning Telenor's corporate governance, I would refer you to the complete account concerning corporate governance, which is given in the annual account, annual report, and is made available on the company's website and as appendix number one for the notice of the general meeting. Thank you for that information.
I'd just like to make you aware that we will not have a vote unless there are any objections. It will be then listed in the minutes that the annual general meeting take the Board's report under advisement. Are there any questions or comments on this point, item eight? It doesn't appear to be the case. We will note the following in the minutes. The annual general meeting discussed the Board's report for corporate governance. The general meeting took this report under advisement. Moving now to item number nine. Which is the Board of Directors policy and report on salary and other remuneration to the executive management. Under this agenda item, which is divided into two items.
Item 9.1, which are the Board of Directors compensation policy on remuneration to executive management, and 9.2, which is the Board of Directors compensation report for executive manage, which is then pre-presented for an advisory vote. I will now give the floor to the Chair of the Board and Chair of the Board of Directors People and Governance Committee, Gunn Wærsted. Will then give you a report on the board's guidelines and the report concerning executive management and salaries in Telenor. Group executive compensation is a subject that the board has spent a lot of time on over this last year and has particularly been reviewed after the state presented its ownership report in autumn of 22 and issued new guidelines for management salaries in the December of 2022.
Board presents today updated policy for group management compensation for the approval by the Board. Important role for the Board is to secure the compensation policy enables Telenor to attract, engage, and retain executives to deliver on the business strategy and contribute to the long-term interest and sustainability of the Telenor Group. The transformation of the telecommunications industry and Telenor Group continues, it is critical for the company to have access to executives with relevant professional and international experience. Key principle for the Board of Directors is and has been to secure the compensation to group leadership team is competitive but not market-leading in the markets Telenor operates, and that compensation is set with due regard to the principle of moderation. It is the Board of Directors' opinion that the compensation policy supports the business strategy long-term interests in recent years.
It is the opinion of the board's directors assessment the compensation policy supports the business strategy, long-term interest, and sustainability of the company and meets expectations from the different Telenor group stakeholders. The board is of the opinion that variable salary facilitated with measurable criteria directly relating to the company's strategy is expedient and contributes to a targeted efforts and motivation amongst the executive group of the company. The board has nevertheless chosen to reduce the opportunity for achieving an annual variable salary from 50% to 25%. This is because the Norwegian state is a majority owner of Telenor with a 54% shareholding, the company therefore wishes to comply with the guidelines for state for executive management salaries. Company provides today competitive and not market-leading salary to group management.
Base salary is the key element in Telenor's compensation package for the management, which otherwise consists of annual variable salary, which after the changes can now comprise only 25% of base salary, which was previously 50% long-term incentives, the so-called LTI, which is now a maximum of 30% of the base salary, which is what it was previously, pension schemes and other benefits. The two incentive schemes are facilitated such that they in combination target short-term and long-term results, where the total expected outcome of the schemes over time harmonizes with the total compensation, which is competitive. For the annual variable salary, the board determines a balanced scorecard. A scorecard which measures both financial and non-financial KPIs relating to areas within the areas sustainable operations in line with the Telenor Group's strategic priorities.
As a consequence of the fact that the potential for variable salary has been reduced from 50% to 25%, the number of criteria or KPIs have been reduced so that we still have a meaningful effect. The scorecard for 2024 will be defined through the company's annual strategic process in the second half of 2023, and will be presented in the executive management report for 2024. The annual allocation of long-term incentive will depend on Telenor's financial results, measured over a two-year period before the year of allocation. The board will use financial targets which foster long-term results for the operations and value creation for Telenor Group and shareholders. There is a three-year binding period for the shares. The program's total length or duration is five years.
The guidelines and policies in their entirety are largely a continuation of the policies that were approved at the annual general meeting in 2022, but with three specific changes as a result of new expectations issued by the state. These changes are as follows. For the group management, the maximum annual earnings for the annual variable salary, STI, has been reduced from 50% of the base salary to 25% of the base salary, with effect from January 1st, 2024. The second change is that the separate scorecard with key priorities for the Group CEO will be removed owing to the reduced potential for variable salary. The third change is that we have included a new data point for the annual salary assessment, which is related to median pay adjustment in kroner for other employees.
Feedback from other shareholders, we have tried to assess the design of the new policy. It is the board's opinion that this proposal for the new policies comply with the requirements in the Public Limited Liability Companies Act, together and in line with the State's new guidelines published on the 12th of December 2022. I will now briefly give you information about the central parts of the compensation and management compensation report of 2022, including the group management and group CEO's salary and remuneration in 2022. The total compensation to the group management was NOK 73 million, compared with NOK 65.3 million in 2021.
The total compensation to the group CEO comprised NOK 16.260 million in 2022, compared with NOK 15.098 million in 2021, an increase of 7.7%. An account of the group's management salary and benefits or remuneration have been given on page nine of the compensation report. The board adjusted the group CEO's basic salary by 3.9% with effect from the 1st of July 2022, just below Telenor's general pay settlement of 2022 of 4%. In the assessment of performance of the group CEO relating to...
related to STI, the board, in addition to the results that have been achieved in the financial and operational scorecard criteria, concerning the entire group management, also given consideration to other key priorities that have been established, especially for the Group CEO. These key priorities are considered important for long-term value creation. For 2022, the key priorities were as follows: to create involvement concerning Telenor's strategy, to contribute to growth and operate a structural agenda, customer orientation and brand building together with succession planning.
The board carried out the evaluation of key priorities and concluded with 50% targets achievement for this part of the annual variable salary, which together with the achievement of the scorecard for Telenor Group of 67.0%, gave a final goal achievement of 61.9% for the Group CEO. This resulted in a bonus payment of NOK 2.133 million for 2021. The company's financial results in 2020 and 2021 fulfilled the criteria in the LTI plan and gave the Group CEO and other leading employees full allocation of LTI shares in 2022.
The share allocation for the current year, 2023, will however be halved, that is to 15% of base salary, since the threshold value for the total earnings or revenues for shareholders was not achieved on this allocation on the basis of the negative share price development in 2022. Additional details concerning remuneration of the Group CEO and the group management are described in the executive compensation report.
It is the view of the board of directors that the executive management report, compensation report meets the requirements in the Public Limited Liability Companies Act and that it is in line with the state guidelines applicable for 2022. In compliance with the requirements in the Public Companies Act, the report has been presented to the auditor who has controlled and checked that the report contains the information that has been required in accordance with the laws and regulations. Telenor operates in several markets internationally and with other salary systems, and the board must, on an ongoing basis, deal with the challenges relating to remuneration of executive employees.
Board's target has not been to be market leading, but to secure competitive conditions in order to attract, engage, and retain leaders in Telenor in a strongly and a globally work labor market, at the same time as the guidelines relating to salary and remuneration of the company's majority owner are taken care of. I will conclude in conclusion, mention that the board, which previously has worked closely with People and Governance Committee as an advisory committee for the board in its work concerning management salaries, management development and corporate governance. The People and Governance Committee is a preparatory and advisory org body which is chaired by the chair of the board, which also consists of three shareholder elected board members and an employee representative.
The group CEO and the group director for HR, sustainability, and external relations also take part in the meetings, while other representatives from management meet in individual cases. Thank you. Thank you, Bjørn. Are there any questions to the presentation under item 9 and 9.1 and the report under 9.2? Please go ahead if there are any questions. Thank you, Torstein Indreby. There's a lot of talk of remuneration to executives during the strike, and Telenor is a high-profile company. To what extent do you take into consideration the general increase in salaries into the employee market when you establish remuneration to the executive management? This has been something that has provoked a lot of people within the trade union movement, especially within government or state-owned companies. That's 1 question.
In 2022, there was a reduction in shareholder value at NOK 60 billion-70 billion, just a bit because of Myanmar, et cetera. To what extent does this influence the bonus schemes? How large a part does that value decrease experienced by shareholders, to what extent does it influence the management's remuneration? Well, Clearly, the development in salaries influences the decision with regard to the salaries to be paid to the CEO and the executive management. If you take last year as an example, the general salary increase of Telenor was 4.2% and to the CEO, Sigve, 3.9%. That is a bit below the general. If you look at previous years, there's a lot of correspondence between general development in salaries and what has been granted to the CEO.
It is an element that we take into consideration. Of course, it's not the only element, but it's an element that we do take into consideration. As regards to your second question, in the annual variable salary, the STI, the share price development is not an element. There are financial and non-financial targets, and the financial represents 60% of the maximum, and non-financial targets or KPIs represent 40%. We as a board, we have elected a criteria that we believe to be important both for the short-term and long-term compliance with targets. As regards to long-term bonus, that can be a maximum of 30% of the base salary. It is the development of share price that's a certain percentage.
50% is cash generation, 50% is the share price. There you have a direct link between the development and the share price and what is granted. As I said, for 2023, that allocation will only be half of what it is for this year because of the development in share price. That is 15% instead of 30%. I hope that is an answer to your question. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? I don't see us having received anything here on the screen either, we have received one comment from the state represented by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Fisheries. They have asked for a remark to be included in the minutes under item 9.1.
I've been asked to read that statement, where it says, "The Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries is of the opinion that the proposal for new guidelines is in line with the state's expectations concerning the framework for variable incentive schemes. As regards to short-term incentive scheme, the guidelines only contain an overall description of what goals and criteria the executive management are measured against. The Ministry does understand that this is an ongoing process as a consequence of, amongst other things, the restructuring of the bonus scheme, and we look forward to a presentation of the further criteria in the executive management's remuneration report that will be presented at the 2024 annual general meeting. This comment will be included in the minutes. We can go on to the adoption of a resolution with regard to 9.1 of the agenda, item 9.1.
It goes as follows: Approval of the board's guidelines for executive management pay. We adopt those. We adopt those guidelines. There are no questions or comments. No further questions or comments. We will soon close the voting. Those of you who want to vote on this should vote immediately on the annual general meeting shall approve the board's guidelines for establishment of remuneration to executive management. The item has now been closed. We will now go on to 9.2, which is an advisory vote on the board's compensation report for executive management. I cannot see us having received any comments to the proposal. We will quite soon close the vote also on this item. Now we have closed the vote. This item has been adopted. Now we will go on to item 10 of the agenda.
It's an authorization to acquire own shares in connection with the incentives program. The board of directors of Telenor ASA proposes that the annual general meeting authorizes the board of directors to acquire company shares in the market in order to fulfill the company's obligations to employees who participate in the group's long-term share incentive program for executive management, the so-called LTI program, and the company's general share program for employees, the ESP program. The share programs are described in Telenor's compensation policy to executive management, see Appendix 2. This authorization will apply until the next annual general meeting in 2024. However, in no event longer than until 30th of June 2024. The decision to grant an authorization to acquire own shares would require at least 2/3 of the votes cast and of the share capital represented at the annual general meeting.
Are there any questions to this proposal? The board proposes that the annual general meeting adopts the following resolution. I shall read. The board of directors is given authorization according to Section 9-4 of the Norwegian Public Limited Liability Companies Act to acquire up to 10 million own shares with a nominal value of a total of NOK 60 million, which corresponds to approximately 0.7% of the company's share capital. The authorization may be used in connection only with the fulfillment of the company's obligations in accordance with the company's LTI program for executive management and in connection with Telenor's general share program for employees, ESP. The amount that can be paid per share must be a minimum of NOK 50 and a maximum of NOK 250.
The board of directors is free regarding the ways in which shares can be acquired, however, so that general principle of equal treatment of shareholders must be complied with. Disposal of own shares acquired under this authorization can only take place as part of fulfillment of the company's obligations in accordance with the company's program for executive management and in connection with the general share program for employees, see section one above. The authorization is valid from the time of registration of the authorization in the register of business enterprises. The authorization is valid until the annual general meeting in 2024. However, in no event longer than until 30th June 2024. We haven't received any questions or comments to this item, so we will soon close the vote on this agenda item.
All of those who have not voted, please vote immediately. The vote is closed, and the count of votes shows that this item has been adopted. We will now go on to the next item, which is item 11, the change or the amendment of the company's articles of association. The board proposes that the company's articles of association be updated, so that the wording be updated in line with changes to the Public Limited Liability Companies Act with effect from the 1st of July this year. The current articles of association for Telenor ASA and the proposals for the updated articles of association are included in the notice, and the changes listed and described in the notice.
There is a proposal to amend Section Eight, third paragraph of the Articles of Association, as described in the notice and shown on screen. In brief, the proposal is to change the earliest possible date for signing up for the general meetings from five to two dates before the annual general meeting, and to remove a sentence that the right to take part in the general meeting presupposes that one is registered as an owner of the shareholder register five working days before the general meeting. Since this will now follow directly from the Public Limited Liability Companies Act. A decision to change any articles of association requires support from at least two-thirds of both the provided votes and of the share capital represented at the meeting. Are there any questions concerning this proposal? That doesn't appear to be the case.
The proposed resolution is that the Annual General Meeting resolve to amend the Articles of Association as proposed by the Board of Directors. No new questions or comments on this. We will soon close the voting. The voting has now been closed. The count shows that the resolution has been adopted in accordance with the proposal. We now move to item number 12, which is the election of shareholder-elected members and deputies to the Corporate Assembly.
The Nomination Committee this year have consisted of Bjørn Erik Næss as Chair, Jan Tore Føsund, Heidi Algharheim , and Lars Tronsgaard. Our mandate has been to propose the election of shareholder-elected members. All of the shareholder-elected members of the Corporate Assembly are up for election. The Corporate Assembly consists of a total of 15 members, of which 10 members and three deputies are elected by the Annual General Meeting.
Five members and two deputies are elected by and from among the employees. The Corporate Assembly's members are elected for a period of two years, as identified in section seven of the Articles of Association. The proposal of the Nomination Committee follows, proposal number four in the recommendation in the notice and have been available on the company's website and is thus considered to be known to the shareholders. I will therefore not speak about each of the background of the candidates. This has been described in good manner in the notice and in Appendix four, as mentioned. What we propose then is that the Annual General Meeting make the following resolution, and adopt the following resolution in compliance with the recommendation of the Nomination Committee. I remind you that you must give a vote for each of the candidates individually.
We will give you, at this annual general meeting, a little bit of extra time to carry out your voting here. The following people are proposed, elected as members of the corporate assembly with effect from 10th of May, 2023, for a period of up to two years until the ordinary annual general meeting in 2025. I will then read out the names. Nils Bastiansen is proposed as a new member of the corporate assembly. Marianne Bergmann Røren is re-election. Kjetil Haug for re-election. Jon Erik Reinhardsen for re-election. Heidi Finskas for re-election. Vidar Salbuvik for re-election. Silvija Seres is proposed to be re-elected. Lisbeth Karin Nærø for re-election. Trine Sæther Romuld, re-election. Maalfrid Brath for re-election.
These are the 10 members of the corporate assembly. The following persons are elected as deputy members of the corporate assembly of Telenor ASA, effective from 10th of May, 2023, for a period of up to 2 years until the annual general meeting in 2025. The 1st deputy member, Elin Myrmel-Johansen, re-election. 2nd deputy member, Randi Marjamaa, re-election. 3rd deputy member, Anette Hjertø, who is a new member. We will wait to see whether there are any questions or comments. This does not appear to be the case. We consider the voting perhaps a little bit early. It is now being closed. The voting is now being closed on the motion. The proposal of the nomination committee for members of the corporate assembly and deputy members has now been adopted.
We move to item 13, which is the election of members for the Nomination Committee. The Nomination Committee proposes then the members for the Nomination Committee. The Nomination Committee comprises four members elected for a period of up to two years. In accordance with Section 9 of the company's Articles of Association, the chair of the Corporate Assembly shall be elected as the chair of the committee. The other three members shall be elected by the general meeting, which 1 shall be a shareholder-elected member or deputy of the Corporate Assembly. Two members elected for the general annual general meeting in 2021 are up for re-election this year. Here, the recommendation proposal can be seen from Appendix 4, the notice, and we consider this then to be known to the shareholders. My question then is, are there any comments to this proposal?
Any questions? That is not the case. We can move to the vote. The candidates are to be elected individually. You need to vote individually. The following persons are proposed elected as members of the Nomination Committee of Telenor ASA, effective from 10th of May, 2023, for a period of up to two years, until the annual general meeting in 2025. These are then Jan Tore Føsund, who is up for re-election, and Anette Hjertø, who would be a new member. Will be a new member. I cannot see there are any questions or comments to the proposal. We will then close the votes on this matter. We have closed the vote and the proposal has been adopted. We now move to item number 14, which is termination of.
The determination.
remuneration for the corporate assembly.
We have a proposal by the nomination committee for the termination of remuneration to the corporate assembly, which has been included with notice of the annual general meeting, and it is available at our website, so we consider it to be known to the shareholders. The question is whether there are any questions or comments to this. This is now your opportunity to make questions and comments. That does not seem to be the case. We have the proposed resolution. The nomination committee's proposal for the termination of the corporate assembly is as follows: Chair per year, NOK 180,000. Deputy chair, NOK 52,600 per year. Member, NOK 41,040 per year. For a deputy member, NOK 8,460 per meeting.
You should know that this would represent an increase of 4.4% over the 2022 rates. Any questions or comments to this? We will close the voting on this item. We have now closed the vote and the resolution has been adopted. It has been approved. We now arrive at item 15, which is the termination of remuneration to the nomination committee. The nomination committee's proposal for remuneration is also set out in the recommendation from the nomination committee.
It is enclosed with the notice and available at Telenor's website. We consider the proposal to be known to the shareholders. One shareholder, Addvis, has presented an alternative proposal, and the proposal and the grounds for that proposal are available on Telenor's website, and they are considered to be known to the shareholders. I presume Quantia AS is represented here today.
Quantia AS made this proposal. You have the floor. Thank you, dear shareholders. Quantia AS has presented an alternative proposal for a remuneration model under item 15.2. The background is a strong belief in good governance being done in close dialogue with the community of shareholders, that nomination committees in general should consist of investors with direct responsibility for what is done in the company.
This would be in line with both the articles of association and various recommendations. There should be a larger upside in their exposure to share prices than what we now see in the committee's fees. In the past two years, the members of the nomination committee have received between NOK 200,000-NOK 300,000 per year, which is more than 50% of the base board member remuneration policy.
This is above the average of other listed companies. This comes in addition to their remuneration through their participation in the corporate association, in the corporate body. We want to limit the remuneration to NOK 50,000 per year. As regards 15.2, we ask for your support for our proposal and that you should vote against 15.1, the nomination committee's proposal to 15.1. In any case, independently of the outcome, we hope that you will promote transparency also with regard to the nomination committee's remuneration.
You should have members that are directly exposed to the development of Telenor's share price in the future. Thank you, Frederick Krusen, on behalf of Quantia AS for presenting the proposal and the grounds for this proposal. I propose that the general meeting first should vote on the proposal from the nomination committee, which would be 15.1.
If that proposal does not obtain a sufficient number of votes, that is a majority vote, well, the shareholders will be asked to vote on the alternative proposal presented by Quantia AS, item 15.2, the alternative resolution. Any questions or comments to this? Okay, we will first proceed to the vote on the Nomination Committee's proposal. That would be resolution 15.1. The general meeting, as it says here, has a proposal that would represent an increase of 4.4% with regard to the current rates from 2022. This would entail a compensation to a chair of NOK 9,135 per meeting, and to members, the compensation would be 6,040 NOK per meeting. This would be in line with item 15.1 on the agenda. Any questions or comments to this?
Soon we will close the vote on this item. We have now closed the vote, and, as far as I can see, the nomination committee's proposal has been adopted. That is in line with what you see on the screen now. We will not vote on item 15. 2, which was the alternative resolution proposed. We are approaching the end of this annual general meeting. We have been through the formal part of this year's general meeting. As we said at the outset, minutes will be prepared that are to be signed by Bjørn Tore Sommer, as elected at the beginning, and by yours truly as the Chair of the meeting. The items and the results of the votes will be made available to shareholders through Telenor's websites.
I thank you for your appearance here at the general meeting of Telenor. I would also like to thank you. I will withdraw as the head of the Corporate Assembly and the Nomination Committee. I've been there for four years now. These have been four exciting years. I will take the opportunity to thank the shareholders for the trust deposited in me. On this occasion, I would also like to thank Gunn Wærsted, the chair of the board, who will now withdraw. The elections will take place at the Corporate Assembly later today, but she has now been a chair for seven and a half years, a long and eventful period. Very good results, both internally and externally. There have been ample challenges to address, but a foundation has been created that is very promising for the future of Telenor. Thank you for a job well done.
I consider the general meeting to have been brought to an end, and we will adjourn this meeting. Thank you all.