All elected members of the Supervisory Board have declared their independence under Rule 53 of the Austrian Code of Corporate Governance. Kory Sorenson satisfies the criteria in Rule 54 for companies with a free float of more than 20 per cent.
A Supervisory Board member is considered independent if he or she is not in any business or personal relationship with the Company or its Management Board that represents a material conflict of interests and is therefore capable of influencing the behaviour of the member concerned.
UNIQA has established the following points as additional criteria for determining the independence of a Supervisory Board member:
- The Supervisory Board member should not have been a member of the Management Board or a managing employee of the Company or a subsidiary of the Company in the past five years.
- The Supervisory Board member should not maintain or have maintained within the last year any business relationship with the Company or a subsidiary of the Company that is material for the Supervisory Board member concerned. This also applies to business relationships with companies in which the Supervisory Board member has a significant economic interest but does not apply to functions performed on decision-making bodies in the Group.
- The Supervisory Board member should not have been an auditor of the Company or a shareholder or salaried employee of the auditing company within the last three years.
- The Supervisory Board member should not be a member of the Management Board of another company in which a Management Board member of our Company is a member of the other company’s Supervisory Board unless one of the companies is a member of the other company’s group or holds an investment in the other company.
- The Supervisory Board member should not be a member of the Supervisory Board for longer than 15 years. This does not apply to Supervisory Board members who are shareholders with a business investment or who are representing the interests of such a shareholder.
- The Supervisory Board member should not be a close family relative (direct descendent, spouse, life partner, parent, uncle, aunt, sibling, niece, nephew) of a Management Board member or of persons who are in one of the positions described in the above points.
