The Supervisory Board

Duties and Responsibilities

The Supervisory Board appoints, supervises and advises the Management Board and is directly involved in decisions of fundamental importance to the company. The Supervisory Board performs its work in accordance with the legal provisions, the Articles of Association, its rules of procedure and its resolutions. It consists of twelve members, ten of whom were elected for four fiscal years by the 2018 Annual General Meeting and two of whom were elected for three years by the 2022 Annual General Meeting.

The Supervisory Board examines and adopts the annual financial statements and the combined management report, which also includes the Non-financial Group Declaration. It assesses and confirms the proposal for the appropriation of profit as well as the consolidated financial statements and the combined management report on the basis of the report prepared by the Audit Committee. The Supervisory Board reports in writing to the shareholders at the Annual General Meeting on the result of its examination.

The Chairman of the Supervisory Board is an independent member. The same applies to the chairs of the committees which the Supervisory Board has set up.

The Chairman of the Supervisory Board chairs the meetings and coordinates communications. The members of the Supervisory Board generally have the same rights and obligations. Supervisory Board resolutions are above all passed in the Supervisory Board meetings but also, if necessary, using the written procedure or by other communication means. At least two meetings are held every six months. In addition, if necessary and on the basis of the rules of procedure of the Supervisory Board, a meeting of the Supervisory Board or its committees can be convened at any time at the request of a member or the Management Board.

The Supervisory Board is composed in such a way that its members as a group have the knowledge, ability and specialist experience, also in those sustainability matters that are significant to the company, required to properly complete its tasks. All of them are familiar with the real estate sector as the segment in which the company operates. At least one member of the Supervisory Board has expertise in the field of accounting and another member has expertise in the field of auditing.

Each Supervisory Board member shall ensure that they have enough time to carry out their mandate.

At the time at which this declaration was prepared, no Supervisory Board members exercised directorships or advisory tasks for important competitors of the company (see Avoidance of Conflicts of Interest).

Since 2020, a standard process for related party transactions has been firmly established within the company. This includes reporting on a regular basis to the Annual General Meeting as part of the Supervisory Board report. The Supervisory Board receives information twice a year in the compliance report on the recording of related party transactions in accordance with the German Stock Corporation Act. Members of the Supervisory Board, for their part, immediately report any transactions that they or parties related to them conclude with the company. The relevant data is also collected at the end of the fiscal year. The Supervisory Board reserves the right to make a decision itself on any transaction requiring approval or to delegate the decision to one of its committees in line with the statutory requirements. No such transactions were recorded in the reporting period.

Supervisory Board Self-Assessment

The Supervisory Board performs regular efficiency reviews that are performed, in alternation, as self-evaluations using a written survey conducted among the members and with the involvement of an independent and experienced moderator in the form of personal interviews. The most recent regular evaluation, supported by a moderator and conducted in the fourth quarter of 2019, revealed that the Supervisory Board performs its work efficiently (see Report of the Supervisory Board).

Supervisory Board Committees

The Supervisory Board sets up an Executive and Nomination Committee, an Audit Committee and a Finance Committee from among its members. Further committees are formed as required. Committees are made up of at least four members of the Supervisory Board (see Report of the Supervisory Board). The committees prepare subjects which are to be discussed and/or resolved by the Supervisory Board. In addition, they pass resolutions on behalf of the entire Supervisory Board. The basis for committee work was the transfer of tasks and responsibilities within the scope of the legal provisions.

The Executive and Nomination Committee is made up of the Chairman of the Supervisory Board and at least three other members to be elected by the Supervisory Board. The Chairman of the Supervisory Board is the Chairman of the Executive and Nomination Committee. The tasks of this committee are, in particular, to prepare the appointment of Management Board members and propose candidates for election as Supervisory Board members, to advise on the remuneration system, to assign responsibilities and to decide in cases of legal and loan transactions with members of the Management Board and conflicts of interest.

The Supervisory Board appoints one of the members of the Audit Committee as the Chairman of the Audit Committee. When electing the committee members, the Supervisory Board shall ensure that the Chairman of the Audit Committee has specialist knowledge and experience in the application of accounting principles and internal control and risk management systems and/or in audits. The Committee Chairman should be independent and not be a former member of the company’s Management Board whose appointment ended less than two years before their appointment as Chairman of the Audit Committee. The Supervisory Board Chairman should not be the Chairman of the Audit Committee. As a result of the FISG provisions, one committee member must have experience in accounting and the other in auditing. With Prof. Dr. Edgar Ernst as the long-standing President of the German Financial Reporting Enforcement Panel and Dr. Florian Funck as the Chief Financial Officer of Haniel & Cie GmbH responsible, among other things, for accounting, the Audit Committee is composed of experts in the areas of auditing and accounting (see table  Supervisory Board Qualifications Profile). The Audit Committee handles, in particular, the monitoring of the accounting process, the effectiveness of the internal control system, risk management system and internal audit system, the audit of the annual financial statements and – unless another committee is entrusted therewith – compliance. Accounting and auditing also include the sustainability report and the auditing of this report. Each member of the Audit Committee can obtain information directly from the heads of those central departments that are relevant to the Audit Committee via the Committee’s Chairman.

The Audit Committee prepares the resolutions of the Supervisory Board on the annual financial statements (and, if applicable, the consolidated financial statements), and, in place of the Supervisory Board, reaches the agreements with the auditor (in particular the issuing of the audit mandate to the auditor, the determination of strategic audit objectives and the fee agreement). The Audit Committee takes suitable action to assess and monitor the independence of the auditor and the audit quality and is responsible for discussing the assessment of the audit risk, audit strategy, planning and results with the auditor. The Audit Committee also makes decisions on behalf of the Supervisory Board on the approval of contracts with auditors for non-assurance services.

The Finance Committee consists of the Supervisory Board Chairman or the latter’s Deputy Chairman and at least three other members. The Finance Committee prepares the resolutions of the Supervisory Board on the following matters:

• Financing and investment principles, including the capital structure of the Group companies and dividend payments.
• Principles of the acquisition and disposal policies, including the acquisition and disposal of individual shareholdings of strategic importance.

In place of the Supervisory Board, the Finance Committee adopts resolutions in particular on general guidelines and principles for the implementation of this financial strategy, including the handling of currency risks, interest, liquidity and other financial risks, the handling of credit risks and the implementation of external financing principles, and also on important transactions regarding the acquisition and disposal of properties and shares in companies as well as corporate financing.