Morning.
Morning.
I'm Lester Knight, Chairman of Aon's Board of Directors. At this time, it's my pleasure to welcome you to Aon's 2015 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders and call the meeting to order. In accordance with the notice of meeting given, it is now past 8:00 A.M. British Summer Time. I am informed that there's a quorum present. I declare that the annual general meeting is open. There are 11 items of business on the agenda today, as set forth in the proxy material sent to shareholders on April 30, 2015. There'll be an opportunity later in the program for questions. We're also joined by representatives of Aon's auditors, Ernst & Young. They will be available for appropriate questions during the Q&A portion of the meeting.
For those of you listening to our meeting this morning via audio webcast, the slides that accompany the presentation can be viewed on Aon's website at www.aon.com. Now it's my pleasure to introduce Peter Meechan, the Company Secretary, who will provide the Secretary's report.
Thank you, Lester. Notice of this annual meeting, together with Aon's proxy statement and annual reports for the year ended December 31, 2014, were made available beginning April 30, 2015, to shareholders of record as of the close of business on April 22, 2015. Aon has appointed Michelle Davies of Computershare Investor Services PLC as Inspector of Election for the voting at the annual general meeting. As noted by our Chairman, a quorum is present at today's meeting. Based on a preliminary report from the Inspector of Election, of the 281,842,429 shares entitled to vote at the meeting, more than 238 million shares, representing approximately 85% of the total voting rights of all of the shareholders entitled to vote, are present in person or by proxy at the meeting. As a result, I declare that a quorum is present. We will proceed with the meeting.
A list of the shareholders eligible to vote at this annual general meeting, as certified by Computershare, as well as a copy of the minutes of the 2014 annual general meeting of Aon shareholders are available at this meeting for inspection. Now I'd like to turn the meeting over to Aon CEO Greg Case.
Thank you, Peter. I appreciate it. I also want to welcome our shareholders and management board of directors to the meeting today. I would just like to say and start on behalf of the management team to thank our board of directors for your efforts over the course of the last year in guidance and perspective as we tried to build and grow the company. On behalf of the team, thank you very much for that. I'd also like to provide a very brief summary and overview of Aon and then turn the meeting over to Christa Davies, our CFO, who's going to provide a financial review of Aon. When you think about Aon and your firm, you start with the idea that we're a global professional services firm focused across the world, 120 countries, 500 offices, roughly $12 billion in revenue as you see.
Really split in two categories, Risk Solutions, $7.8 billion, and HR Solutions, $4.2 billion. Specifically, really focused on three parts of the global economy, risk, retirement, and health. That really is the basis upon our strategic initiatives and thrust. When you think about risk, retirement, and health, it turns out each of these three areas in the global economy is growing and building in both complexity and in terms of stature in the global economy. We have three of these areas, risk, retirement, and health, and we've got three great platforms as part of Aon that puts us in a great position to address those over time on behalf of our clients. The team has also taken great pains to actually focus the firm to address these platforms. If you think about where Aon was in 2004, roughly a third of our firm was focused on underwriting.
Now in 2014, our team has truly focused the firm, sold off the third of Aon, and made the biggest investments in the history of risk, retirement, and health on risk, retirement, and health. In addition to that, made substantial investments in content capability. You see on the slide here a number of examples, whether it's OmniPoint investment, exchange investments, Aon Client Promise, Review, Employ, and a number of others. Again, focused the firm on risk, retirement, and health, made a number of investments around risk, retirement, and health in analytics, data, and capability. We've gotten a lot of great feedback in the course of that from external sources validating some of the efforts we've taken. We've highlighted a few examples here. The most important of which, however, is with our clients.
We enjoy a retention around clients that's greater than 90% and, in fact, some of the highest retentions we've ever had in our history. Our team sits today focused on these three broad categories, risk, retirement, and health, making investments in each of these categories with a view toward the future around excitement and opportunity, and our view is we've got a long way to go on the journey with tremendous upside on behalf of our clients, and we're very excited to do that with our shareholders and appreciate their support. With that overview, I'd like to turn the meeting over to Christa for a financial review. Christa?
Thank you so much, Greg, and I'm delighted to be here today to do a few financial highlights of Aon. I'm going to start with the four key metrics we report to shareholders every quarter and every year, and we aim to improve all four of these key metrics over the course of each year. The first is organic revenue growth. As a professional services firm, we're focused on growing organically, and we have been growing in the low to mid-single-digit range, and we expect that trend to continue. On the margin expansion, we've got long-term margin goals for both segments, and we've made substantial margin expansion over the last nine years. EPS, we've had substantial EPS growth over the last nine years. In fact, a compounded rate of 16% annually over that period of time.
Free cash flow is a very important goal for the company. We define free cash flow as cash flow from operations less capital expenditure. The sort of the cash we could actually spend on all forms of capital usage, whether that be organic investments, M&A, buyback dividends, et cetera. We're growing cash flow substantially. We expect to grow cash flow to get to a GBP 2.3 billion in free cash flow by 2017. As we look at our long-term margin goals, we have margin goals for both of our segments, Risk Solutions and HR Solutions. The Risk Solutions goal of 26% and HR Solutions goal of 22%. I will note that we have operational plans to achieve both of those goals, not assuming any changes in the macro environment.
If interest rates were to improve, that would speed up the timing of the achievement of these goals. We're not assuming that insurance pricing, benefits administration pricing, GDP, the interest rate environment, all these things today provide certain headwinds in our business, and we assume those continue. We still are very confident about achieving our long-term goals. Next, I wanted to talk for a moment about free cash flow, a very important focus for the company. It's how we value Aon. We think about free cash flow, and we have a model going out which models free cash flow over time. We see substantial growth in free cash flow over the coming years to get to a goal of GBP 2.3 billion in free cash flow by 2017, really driven by four big improvement areas.
The first is our growth in operations, revenue growth, and margin expansion, our core business growth. The second is decreasing uses of cash on pension restructure. We've done a lot of work over the last couple of years to really bound those uses of cash, and we see decreasing uses of cash on pension and restructuring over the coming years. The re-domicile to the U.K. means that our cash taxes will go down, really lighting up with the effective tax rate decline we saw in 2014 will flow through to cash taxes in 2015. Lastly, we see improvements in working capital as we continue to improve the processes around cash collection from customers and cash payments to suppliers. Lastly, I really just wanted to talk through how we look at valuing Aon.
As we think about this free cash flow goal, GBP 2.3 billion, you can divide by the future share count in 2017, think about a free cash flow multiple that gets you to a potential value of Aon over time. We really see substantial upside in the firm over the coming years and believe on a journey, as we continue to improve Aon, that we're less than half of the way through that journey. We've got substantial improvements yet to come in operations, and most importantly, in cash flow. Thank you very much, and I will now hand the meeting back over to Lester.
Thank you, Christa and Greg, for the update. We're now ready to take any questions. Please step up to the microphone and direct your questions to Greg or Christa and me. Not seeing any questions, I'm now going to turn the meeting back to Peter for the resolutions to be considered at today's annual general meeting. Thank you.
Thank you. The following individuals have been nominated for re-election as directors of the company, and each will be re-elected by way of a separate ordinary resolution of the company. Lester B. Knight, Gregory C. Case, Fulvio Conti, Cheryl Francis, James W. Leng, J. Michael Losh, Robert S. Morrison, Richard B. Myers, Richard C. Notebaert, Gloria Santona, Carolyn Y. Woo. There are nine additional matters to be acted upon by ordinary resolution at this meeting, and one additional matter scheduled to be acted upon by special resolution. In accordance with the recommendation of the board of directors, I move the following proposals for approval by ordinary resolution. The receipt of Aon's annual report and accounts for the year ended December 31, 2014, together with reports of the directors and the auditor. The ratification of the appointment of Ernst & Young LLP as Aon's independent registered public accounting firm for 2015.
The reappointment of Ernst & Young LLP as Aon's United Kingdom statutory auditor under the Companies Act 2006 to hold office from the conclusion of the meeting until the next annual general meeting at which accounts are laid before Aon. The authorization of the directors to set Ernst & Young's remuneration as statutory auditor. An advisory vote on the compensation of the named executive officers as set forth in Aon's annual proxy. An advisory vote on the directors' remuneration report included in Aon's annual report and accounts. The approval of the forms of share repurchase contracts and the counterparties through which Aon may conduct repurchases pursuant to the company's share repurchase program. The authorization of the directors to exercise all powers of Aon to allot shares or grant rights to subscribe for or convert any security into shares in Aon.
The authorization of Aon and its subsidiaries to make political donations and expenditures. As an ordinary resolution, each resolution requires a simple majority of the votes cast to be voted in favor of the resolution to pass. In addition, in accordance with the recommendation of the board of directors I move the authorization of the board of directors to allot equity securities for cash without the rights of pre-emption provided by the Companies Act 2006 for approval by special resolution. As a special resolution, this resolution requires that shareholders representing at least 75% of the votes cast to be voted in favor of the resolution to pass. As required by our articles, the vote will be taken on a poll. As a result, each person represented in person or by proxy is entitled to one vote for every share held.
I will now turn the meeting over to Lester.
We will now conduct the official business of the meeting. It is now 8:12 A.M. British Summer Time. I formally propose that each of the resolutions set out in the notice of the meeting are put to the meeting, and I declare the polls open for voting on all the resolutions. Let me spend a moment reviewing the voting procedures. Proxy statements and proxy voting cards were sent to all shareholders prior to the meeting. Those of you who returned proxies prior to this meeting authorized the persons named in the proxy to vote on all proposals coming before the meeting. Similarly, if you granted your proxy over the telephone or internet, you do not need to vote during the meeting. Any shareholder who has not submitted a proxy or who wishes to change his or her vote, please stand and you will be given a ballot.
Anyone who still has a proxy card should now hand it to the Inspector of Election so it may be counted as a vote executed in person at the meeting. Will the Inspector of Election please collect all ballots at this time. Are all the ballots in? Thank you. All the ballots are in. I now declare the polls closed. Peter, please note the time of the closing of the polls for the minutes. The Inspector of Election is requested to tabulate the proxies and ballots and report the final voting results to the secretary. Peter will announce the provisional results as soon as possible. Now it's my pleasure to introduce our non-executive directors. I'd like to ask each of those who are seated in the front row to please stand and be recognized. Fulvio Conti. Cheryl Francis. Jim Leng. Mike Losh. Bob Morrison. Dick Myers. Dick Notebaert. Gloria Santona.
Carolyn Woo. Please join me in thanking the directors for all the time and effort they devote on behalf of Aon and its shareholders. I'd also like to thank Greg Case and Christa Davies and the whole Aon management team for their efforts on behalf of the company and its shareholders. I'd like to ask Peter to report on the voting.
Following a review of proxies received and tabulated before the start of the meeting, each nominee for re-election as director received a majority of the votes cast at this meeting, with the number of votes cast for each nominee for director exceeding the number of votes cast against each nominee for director. In addition, each other proposed resolution has been approved as an ordinary or special resolution as required. These results are provisional. The Inspector of Election will furnish a written report of the final vote count, which will be attached as an exhibit to the minutes of this meeting, reported in a filing by Aon with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and made available on the company's website. I will turn the meeting back to Lester for closing remarks.
Thank you, Peter. That concludes the business of the meeting. I appreciate all shareholders who came today and joined us. I declare the meeting officially closed. Thank you.
Great job, Mr. Chairman. Nice work.