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At the first general meeting of the new UBS, a number of issues are likely to be on the minds of shareholders.
How much salary is appropriate for bank boss Sergio Ermotti? How is the integration of Credit Suisse progressing? And how much capital should UBS set aside for future crises? These are hot topics that will be discussed at the first general meeting of the new, even larger UBS.
Is 14 million francs in wages okay for Sergio Ermotti?
Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter expressed her doubts when she recently presented the Federal Council’s report on banking stability. Executive compensation would be beyond the imagination of any ordinary citizen. “I don’t think this development is good,” said the FDP Federal Councilor.
FDP party president Thierry Burkart spoke of “presumptuous bonus excesses” by some top managers. These would destroy the population’s trust in the economy as a whole. There was also a lot of criticism elsewhere. SP co-president Cédric Wermuth, for example, said: Sergio Ermotti’s salary of a good 14 million francs was “beyond good and evil”.
However, politicians do not decide on the level of manager salaries. The general meeting decides on this. There should be a yes to the remuneration. Because most of the investors who call the shots at UBS are hardly bothered by lavish top salaries. They want to see growth and increasing profits.
Shareholder representatives recommend rejection of the remuneration report
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At the UBS general meeting, Ermotti’s salary will also be a topic of discussion among shareholders. Although the bank’s CEO is working “according to all previous knowledge” successfully, his remuneration is “massively exaggerated”, criticizes the shareholders’ association Journalists. Ermotti’s salary of a good 14 million francs goes beyond “the usual framework,” writes Actares in a statement and recommends that shareholders reject all compensation agendas.
The organization is also dissatisfied with UBS’s sustainability efforts. For example, there is no obligation to phase out fossil fuels. The approval of the sustainability report should also be rejected. Because of the importance of the climate issue, the organization also recommends rejecting the management report and opposes the discharge of the board of directors and management.
The shareholder representative shows somewhat less rejection Ethos. With nine out of 29 items on the agenda, he rejected around a third of the applications. Ethos is also against the acceptance of the compensation and sustainability reports. The two important shareholder organizations see it differently ISS and Glass Lewis. Both recommend that shareholders accept all items on the agenda at the AGM, including the remuneration of the management and board of directors as well as the sustainability report. (srf/awp)
How is the CS takeover going?
The bank management will say little new about this at the AGM. Because the most important points are known. But they certainly provide fuel for discussions: the Swiss branch network is expected to shrink to around 200 branches. To date there have been around 190 UBS branches and an additional 95 CS branches in Switzerland. The number of branches of both banks combined will now be drastically reduced – by around a third.
From the perspective of shareholders, this is good news. Because running branches costs money. The fewer branches, the more profit remains. For the same reason, the planned workforce reductions are likely to meet with – majority – approval. The bank wants to cut 3,000 jobs in Switzerland alone.
Before it can fully implement this, the bank wants to merge the legal entities of UBS and CS. That should happen by summer. This is likely to be followed by further cost cuts. The aim of the general meeting is primarily to provide information about the status of the company’s restructuring.
How much capital will UBS need in the future?
UBS will need massively more capital in the future than it does today. The Federal Council recently made this clear in its banking stability report. When asked, Finance Minister Karin Keller-Sutter confirmed: An additional requirement in the range of 15 to 25 billion dollars is realistic. These figures were calculated by financial analysts based on the Federal Council’s proposals for banking regulation.
One principle of this regulation is: UBS must have so much capital that it can weather stormy times with as much stability as possible. Otherwise the bank is too great a danger for the entire economy and therefore for Switzerland.
What is crucial is that if UBS collapses one day, taxpayers must not be asked to pay. At the AGM, UBS will explain how it basically intends to raise the necessary capital without reacting directly to the bank stability report. She wants to examine this more closely first.
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The price of sustainable cocoa is debated at the World Conference in Brussels
2024-04-23 22:33:24
Planters, traders, manufacturers and distributors are gathered from April 21 to 24 in Brussels for the fifth World Cocoa Conference. The meeting is being held in an unprecedented context, marked by prices which have reached historic records, and as new binding European regulations for cocoa producers are due to come into force at the end of December, to combat deforestation.
« Pay more for sustainable cocoa. » By choosing this title, the International Cocoa Organization (Icco) set the tone, even if it meant depriving itself of certain sponsors for this fifth world conference.
Aside from the Mars group, multinationals did not respond to his call. One of them unofficially made the organizers understand that it was not possible to rally behind such a slogan, when others ended up agreeing to finance a minima the conference, under the condition of not appearing. A positioning that says a lot about the difficulties of the cocoa majors in publicly committing to paying farmers more.
Planters supported by the Queen of the Belgians
Despite these not very encouraging signals, talking about prices is much less taboo than a few years ago, experts agree. Some actors present in Brussels want to believe that a shift is taking shape, and are clinging to the speech of the Queen of the Belgians, Mathilde, who opened the Conference on Monday April 22, by insisting on the moral necessity to act, in the face of a ” distribution of value so unequal » in the cocoa-chocolate sector.
This speech was welcomed by all, but the unanimity expressed very quickly cracks when it comes to knowing how to better distribute the cost of more sustainable cocoa between the links in the chain, in other words when it comes to find out who will pay for a more respectable bean, which does not cause deforestation, and which allows the planter to live decently while sending his children to school.
“Someone will have to pay”
« The reality is today that no one wants to share their margin », noted with bitterness Michel Arrion, executive director of Icco in Brussels, and ultimately, “ few consumers are ready to pay more », according to Philippe de Selliers, president of Choprabisco, the Royal Belgian Association of Chocolate Industries.
However, the cocoa farmer, the link which achieves the smallest margin according to the design office And Basic, cannot bear the costs of the traceability required today by the new European regulations, once again recalled the Ivory Coast, the world’s leading supplier of beans, which calls for the responsibility of the cocoa industry.
In this great game of ping-pong, everyone must take responsibility, according to the International Cocoa Organization, including producing states and Europe, as an importing market, ” because at the end of the day, someone will have to pay”.
#price #sustainable #cocoa #debated #World #Conference #Brussels
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The price of sustainable cocoa is debated at the World Conference in Brussels
Comparing VR Headsets: Past vs Present – Why the New VR Headphones Are Game-Changing
That’s a really bad comparison, the issue with older VR headsets was that most users couldn’t use them properly. Severe nausea after 5 minutes of use. In addition, you need a heavy PC for 3D.
That doesn’t compare to today’s headphones, especially not to those of the VP, where all the hardware is IN the VP. And it looks like the way through is so good you could play table tennis with it…
And how difficult it is to wear something like this is entirely up to the user and getting used to it. I have been wearing glasses for 40+ years from the moment I wake up until I go to bed (they only come off in the shower). Today I also wear headphones for a large part of the day. I’d walk around the house more with headphones this big if the range was better… I expect VP will take some getting used to for my type of user.
I now spend a large part of the day behind three large screens, if I can replace them with virtual displays, yes!
Don’t forget that the first smartphones were not sold to the masses, they were complete technologists as a target group! Even the first iPhone was not for the general public, that came much later. Is this going to be a thing for the masses (now)? No of course not! That was never the intention, because even 800,000 units in the first year for the US and China that is 1 in 2200 inhabitants. That would be something like 8500 headphones in total in the Netherlands… For comparison, 1 in 5.5 people today (worldwide) have an iPhone.
My problem is that the VP is not yet available in the Netherlands.
2024-04-24 07:35:09
#Kuo #Apple #Vision #Pro #headphones #due #demand
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Comparing VR Headsets: Past vs Present – Why the New VR Headphones Are Game-Changing