Auditors must be permanently independent if they are to provide an objective assessment of annual financial statements. This means that neither the individuals performing the audit nor the audit firm may have any potential conflicts of interest with respect to the company.

The lead auditor should be mentioned by name in the annual report and should not be appointed for longer than five years.

We are in favour of appointing a prominent audit firm with a strong reputation.

We require expenses incurred in connection with the audit to be reasonable and to be disclosed and published separately from the non-audit fees. As a general rule, non-audit fees should not disproportionately exceed audit fees. Failure to publish the fees will be considered problematic when auditors stand for re-election.

We support the deployment of an independent audit committee by the supervisory board as a monitoring tool.