DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA (DWS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Shareholders. Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of my colleagues on the Supervisory Board, I would like to welcome you very warmly to today's Annual General Meeting for DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA. This is the same thing last year, but this time, it is final. Today will be my last Annual General Meeting as Chairman of the Supervisory Board. In Oliver Behrens, we have found an excellently qualified candidate as my successor and he will stand for election to the Supervisory Board at today's AGM. I will come back to this later on in greater detail. For a good 6 years I have served DWS as Chairman of the Supervisory Board on its path as a listed company. During this time, the entire DWS team has overcome a number of challenges and come along way as we will show you in a moment. It has been my pleasure to perform this role, even though it has not always been plain sailing, and I'm grateful for the trust you have placed in me, ladies and gentlemen. As announced last year, I will continue to be a member of the Supervisory Board, and I look forward to further supporting Oliver Behrens and everyone at DWS and the Supervisory Board in the future. But let me come back to today's AGM of DWS which I hereby open. Ladies and gentlemen, before I move on to my actual speech, let me briefly turn to the formalities required at an AGM. The Annual General Meeting was convened in proper form and in due time with the publication of the agenda in the federal gazette of 25th of April 2024. All members of the Executive Board of the general partner are present here today. They are Stefan Hoops, Markus Kobler, Karen Kuder, Dirk Goergen and Manfred Bauer. I'm pleased to be able to welcome all to talk you here in person. Moreover, all members of the Supervisory Board are present here in person today. The shareholder representatives are my deputy, Ute Wolf, Bernd Leukert, Margret Suckale, Aldo Caroso, Kazuhide Toda, Richard Morris and Christina Bannier. And the employee representatives are Erwin Stengele, Christine Metzler, Stephan Accorsini and Angela Meurer. Let me also welcome all of you very warmly here today. Moreover, on the far right from your perspective, we have our notary, Dr. Habetha. Dr. Habetha will be taking notarized minutes of today's Annual General Meeting. The list of participants is currently being drawn up. Once the list has been completed, I will announce the attendance. The attendance area covers the congress center of Frankfurt's trade fair grounds. This is whether the studio and the support back office are located. And this is also where votes will be counted later on today. Moreover, the company's proxy is also located here. The agenda with the wording of the proposed resolutions is available for inspection here. A copy is held by our notary. The full wording is also available on our website. The entire Annual General Meeting will be broadcast live on our website today as a video and audio transmission. The broadcast can be followed by our shareholders and the interested public. Recordings of all statements up to the end of the CEO's speech will be retrievable on our website after the close of today's Annual General Meeting. Ladies and gentlemen, we've now concluded the formalities. Please allow me to continue with the report of the Supervisory Board about its activities in the completed financial year. In order to ensure the effective performance of its function in its entirety and in the form of its committees, the Supervisory Board receives regular reports particularly from the members of the Executive Board. We are informed about the company's business development and strategy, corporate, financial and human resources planning, profitability as well as its risk, liquidity and capital management activities. The main activities of the Supervisory Board in financial year 2023 are covered in detail on Pages V to X11 of our annual report 2023. I would therefore like to highlight only some of the topics we dealt with at this point. Overall, the Supervisory Board and its committees held a total of 33 meetings last year. The average attendance rate was more than 97%. The Supervisory Board met 9 times for plenary meetings. In addition to monitoring day-to-day business operations, our primary task cables to advise the Executive Board on the implementation of the strategic core projects. Specifically, these include the multiyear transformation program and DWS' ambitions for growth, along with measures to further strengthen its market position. Together, the Supervisory Board and the Executive Board concentrated on implementing the strategy that was presented to the capital market and the public in December 2022 in a revised version. As in previous years, we also had a 2-day meeting in 2023. As the main emphasis, both Boards reviewed the strategic milestones that had already been achieved, individual adjustments of initiatives and investments in new growth areas. Furthermore, the Supervisory Board and Executive Board discussed the priorities for a forward-looking program at length and analyzed the trends, risks and opportunities of the current market environment. Core topics discussed included "Culture at DWS", the sustainability strategy and its implementation and the company's data strategy. We also considered our strategies in Asia Pacific and in the Americas. Needless to say, another key focus of the strategy meeting and the work of the Supervisory Board was our multi-year transformation program. One of the goals of this program is to establish a more independent, more efficient IT platform that is even better tailored to the requirements of DWS' fiduciary business. With a working group specifically set up for the transformation program from within the Supervisory Board, it advised the Executive Board on its implementation and continuously reviewed management's project goals, some of which proved to be overly optimistic. As a result the Executive Board made a number of adjustments to parts of the transformation program, which Stefan Hoops will explain to you in greater detail in a moment. We will continue to closely monitor this complex topic in the current financial year. Apart from the focus on organic growth, the Supervisory Board also discussed the possibility of pursuing inorganic growth options to achieve economies of scale, enhance DWS's product expertise and expand its presence in growth regions. Against this backdrop, the past financial year was leveraged to explore business opportunities arising from strategic partnerships and the use of digital solutions. The key focus was on strategic partnerships in the Asia Pacific region. DWS was able to extend its partnership with Nippon Life for another 5 years However, DWS entered into a strategic alliance with U.S.-based Galaxy Digital to develop products for investment in digital assets. I will come back to this move later on. Of course, the Supervisory Board also remained very focused on sustainability, a topic that continues to be of great relevance to the industry. In the process, the Supervisory Board and the Adhoc Committee formed for this purpose in 2021, addressed the “so called greenwashing allegations” in great depth. The Adhoc Committee consistently gained insights into the status of the ongoing investigations and the further courses of action planned, keeping the entire Supervisory Board updated on this matter in a regular manner. An agreement on these allegations was finally reached with the U.S. authorities in the past financial year. At the same time, public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt, is continuing its investigations in 2024. DWS is engaged in discussions with the public prosecutor to resolve the ESG process as quickly as possible. This is another topic that will be addressed in greater detail by Stefan Hoops in his speech in a moment. In the fourth quarter, there were further important developments regarding the future composition of our Board. As already mentioned at the outset and supported by the recommendation of the shareholder representatives. In the Nomination Committee, the Supervisory Board decided to propose Oliver Behrens for election as a shareholder representative to the Supervisory Board under agenda Item 7. It is intended for the Supervisory Board to elect him as its new Chairman, my successor, immediately thereafter. The nomination of Mr. Behrens was the result of an intensive selection process carried out over many months for the Nomination Committee under the leadership of my colleague, Margret Suckale, whose efforts are hereby gratefully acknowledged. Mr. Behrens will briefly introduce himself as a candidate for election to the Supervisory Board in a moment. At this point therefore, I will only briefly mention that Oliver Behrens is currently CEO of Morgan Stanley Europe Holding SE, Morgan Stanley Europe SE and Morgan Stanley Bank AG in Frankfurt. He is also a board member of Morgan Stanley International Limited in London. His activities for Morgan Stanley are expected to end on 30 June 2024. Oliver Behrens was also on the Executive Board of Deka-Bank for 9 years until 2014, most recently as Deputy CEO. From 1992 to 2005, he worked in several positions at the former DWS Group in Frankfurt and Luxembourg ultimately speak of the Executive Board of Deutsche Asset Management Investment GmbH. We are confident, ladies and gentlemen, that we have found an outstandingly qualified candidates to complement and lead our Supervisory Board. I'm therefore delighted to welcome Mr. Behrens as designated Chairman of the Supervisory Board, and I wish him every success for his new role. It was originally also planned to appoint James von Moltke, CFO and Deputy Chairman of the Management Board of Deutsche Bank AG, as a member of the Supervisory Board. After careful consideration, he has opted not to stand for election. His decision also reflects a Deutsche Bank policy to reduce the presence of Management Board Members on Supervisory Boards of group entities. At the same time, Bernd Leukert member of the Management Board of Deutsche Bank AG, as well as Chief Technology, Data and Innovation Officer, has decided to step down from the Supervisory Board at the close of today's Annual General Meeting. Leukert has been a member of the Supervisory Board since 2020. His decision also reflects the Deutsche Bank policy I have just mentioned. I would like to take this opportunity to thank Bernd Leukert for his excellent constructive work on our Supervisory Board. In recent years, he has enhanced the Supervisory Board with his strategic advice and technology expertise, time and again. Ladies and gentlemen, I am certain that the new constellation of the Supervisory Board of DWS will continue to enable the bodies to cooperate in a spirit of partnership in the best interest of DWS. But let me come back to the activities of the Supervisory Board. As every year, the Board also discussed the dependency report which lists the company's relationships with affiliated companies and thus with Deutsche Bank. This dependency report was drawn up by the Executive Board and audited by KPMG as auditor. KPMG did not raise any objections and issued an unqualified audit opinion. Its wording can be found on Page XII of the annual report 2023. Moreover, KPMG has audited the annual financial statements and the consolidated financial statements as well as a summarized management report for the Annual and Consolidated financial statements for financial year 2023 and issued an unqualified audit opinion in each case. Its wording can be found on Page 149 following of the Annual report 2023 in the German version. The Supervisory Board had no objections during its review of the dependency report and the audit report by KPMG. Likewise, there were no grants for objections to the final declarations of the Executive Board. Ladies and gentlemen, the Audit and Risk Committee met 9 times under the chairmanship of Ms. Wolf. It supported the Supervisory Board in monitoring the control reporting and accounting processes. And intensively address the annual financial statements and consolidated financial statements as well as the interim report and the report issued by the auditor. In this context, the committee reviewed the valuation of goodwill and other intangible assets as well as the service fees charged by Deutsche Bank AG and its subsidiaries as well as related governance processes. Furthermore, the committee monitored the effectiveness of the group's risk management system, taking into account the potential impact of the conflict in Ukraine. It also examined the integration of sustainability risks into the risk framework. The Audit and Risk Committee held a number of extraordinary meetings in which, among others, the following topics were discussed, some of which have already been mentioned. DWS' transformation program, the connections between the transformation program in DWS' controls and processes, audits of the IT systems and processes and the charging of services within the group. For financial year 2023, the Audit and Risk Committee recommended to renew the audit engagement of KPMG. The discussions took into account the results of the review of the statutory auditor's independence, which did not identify any indications for any risks to independents. Ladies and gentlemen, the Remuneration Committee chaired by Ms. Suckale, had 4 meetings in 2023. It examined the appropriate design of the remuneration systems for employees and key risk takers who have material influence on the overall risk profile of the group. In addition, the committee discussed the corporate culture and was regularly informed about significant regulatory developments and their impact on the group's compensation framework. The Nomination Committee shared by myself held a total of 11 meetings in 2023. We prepared the Supervisory Board's proposals for the election of new shareholder representatives to the Supervisory Board i.e. the Annual General Meeting on 15th of June 2023. The committee also discussed the process for selecting our new designated Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Oliver Behrens, as already mentioned. This selection process was conducted with the assistance of an independent executive recruiter under the leadership of Margret Suckale. The Nomination Committee also supported the Supervisory Board in carrying out its efficiency review. Details on the activities of the committees can be found on Pages VIII to X of our annual report for 2023. Let me now turn to the activities of the joint committee in the completed business year. You will find more detailed information starting on Page XV of our annual report. The joint committee met 3 times in 2023. In accordance with its statutory duties and powers, the committee discussed variable remuneration, the remuneration structure and individual targets for the managing directors of the general partner in detail. The joint committee submitted proposals on variable remuneration to the shareholders' meeting of the general partner, which is responsible for defining the remuneration of the Managing Directors and followed these proposals. Ladies and gentlemen, following my comments, most of which are required by law. Let us now move on to the more higher level business issues. In the 12 months past since our last AGM, DWS has continued to make good headway in implementing its strategy. Last year I presented the restructuring efforts in the reduced part of our strategy, which were carried out at an early stage. These measures are designed to help DWS self-fund the investments in its growth and build projects. You will hear more about those 2 in a moment. In the value category, which covers DWS' active business, the company focused on changes in active fixed income. In other words, actively managed products, investing in fixed income securities. As a result, despite the challenging environment, they led to a very encouraging performance for our customers, thereby exceeding the respective benchmarks of their funds in many cases. In the framework of its "Growth" initiatives, DWS focused on investments in the Xtrackers business. Exchange-traded products that is, particularly ETFs. Here, last year, record inflows were recorded. Moreover, DWS continued its investments into its other growth area, alternatives with a focus on infrastructure and the push into private credit. In the "Build" category, DWS is targeting future trends in the asset management industry. The company launched the first exchange-traded commodities for digital assets as part of its strategic alliance with Galaxy Digital. In addition, it has entered into a partnership to issue a fully collateralized euro-denominated stable coin. In other words, a kind of crypto currency that strives to achieve and ensure price stability. Ladies and gentlemen, you'll hear more about the implementation of this strategy from our CEO in a moment. Let me now turn to our financial results for the past financial year. Despite a general improvement in market sentiment, 2023 was another very demanding year for the asset management industry. Inflationary pressure continued, geopolitical crisis increased, Real estate markets were weak, and the revenue environment was tough. Supported by all of our 3 pillars: active, passive and alternatives in all main regions, DWS nevertheless generated high net inflows of EUR 28 billion last year. However, as average assets under management were lower compared to 2022, both adjusted revenues and adjusted profit before tax were less than in the previous year. In an inflationary environment, our adjusted costs increased only slightly demonstrating DWS' strict cost discipline. Based on this overall solid financial performance, we proposed an increased dividend for the fifth time in a row of EUR 2.10 per share. Moreover, as promised when we announced our upgraded strategy in December 2022, we proposed an extraordinary dividend of EUR 4 per share. Ladies and gentlemen, last year, there were also 2 changes on DWS' Executive Board. At our last AGM, I reported in detail that our former CFO, Claire Peel, has decided to step down from her position following a career change. She left DWS with effect from 30th of September 2023. Although I already thanked Claire Peel at last year's AGM, I would like to express our gratitude once again in the light of the outstanding services she rendered to the company in over 5 years on the Executive Board. Her successor is Dr. Markus Kobler. He was appointed as new CEO and member of the Executive Board as of 1st of November of last year. We are delighted to have gained a leader of his caliber and standing for DWS. With his experience as CFO of Allianz Global Investors, where he was also in charge of the U.K. operations and his long-term Asia experience is uniquely positioned to make an excellent contribution to DWS. Another change on the Executive Board was caused by the shift in the focus in DWS' IT transformation project. In this context, Angela Maragkopoulou ended her role as Chief Operating Officer by mutual agreement with effect from the end of 2023. Angela Maragkopoulou is now pursuing new professional challenges for which we wish her every success. We're very grateful to Angela for her contributions to developing DWS' platform. In order to enable the new Chief Operating Officer and the COO function to fully focus on executing the ongoing IT transformation, Markus Kobler has assumed Board responsibility for the Chief Operating Office. In this new constellation, DWS started off well into the new year, delivering a solid performance in the first quarter of 2024. It generated high net interest of almost EUR 8 billion and increased assets under management to a new record of EUR 941 billion. Although adjusted revenues were slightly down quarter-on-quarter, adjusted costs were reduced more strongly, so that overall, the adjusted profit before tax grew. And in addition, consolidated profit also rose substantially. The results of the first quarter of 2024 and last year show that DWS' strategy is working well. They are testimony to the focused and passionate commitment of the Executive Board and all employees around the world. On behalf of the Supervisory Board, and certainly, on your behalf too, dear shareholders, I would like to sincerely thank the entire DWS team for their great work. These efforts are also reflected in DWS' share price. This week, it achieved an all time high, significantly exceeding the share price at last year's AGM. Ladies and gentlemen, given the progress made and the growth achieved, DWS is on track to reach its financial targets for 2025. Along the way, the Supervisory Board will continue to support the Executive Board in a constructive and critical manner in implementing their strategy. From now on, under the leadership of Oliver Behrens. Once again, I wish him every success. Dear shareholders also on behalf of my colleagues on the Supervisory Board, I thank you all for your confidence and your support. Ladies and gentlemen, our CEO, Stefan Hoops will now present a more detailed report about DWS' business development and strategy. Thank you very much for your kind attention.

Thank you very much, dear Karl von Rohr. Thank you very much for a lot of valuable advice and excellent leadership in a period which was certainly not easy neither for you personally now for DWS all in all. Thank you very much. Dear shareholders, ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the entire Executive Board, I also would like to welcome you to the Sixth Annual General Meeting of the DWS Group. One year ago, I celebrated my premiere on this very occasion at that time, I was called on to give account of a very challenging year in which we were primarily concerned with ensuring stability at DWS. Things are a little different this year. Today, I'm pleased to report on the first year in which we were able to fully implement our new strategy. A year in which DWS' stability was never in doubt. Moreover, a year that An industry analyst had called the year of “flow-less” market recovery during which your DWS nevertheless recorded considerable net inflows totaling EUR 28 billion. I will come to the details of the figures in a moment, but here's a sneak preview. Even excluding Cash & Advisory services, net flows amounted to EUR 16.5 billion. This means that in 2023, DWS recorded one of the highest organic growth rates amongst asset managers worldwide. I would like to take this opportunity also on behalf of the entire team to thank our customers for their continued confidence in the performance of our products. First of all, I would like to present the results of operations for 2023. In doing so, I will also report on what we have been doing over the past year. In particular, the implementation of our strategy, which was announced at the Capital Markets Day 2022. Afterwards, I will give you a brief overview of the first quarter results of 2024 and bringing you up to date with what we are focusing on this year. Let us first look back over the last 12 months. Ladies and gentlemen, on our Capital Markets Day in 2022, we presented our strategy, reduced, value, growth, build. We promised the capital market and thus you too dear shareholders ambitious financial targets for 2025. We want to achieve earnings per share of EUR 4.5 for 2025 and we want to reduce our adjusted cost to income ratio to less than 59%. These 2 targets are priorities because in our view, they are most relevant to you as owners of DWS. They attest to the financial performance of DWS and set the benchmark for the business we want to focus on. On our Capital Markets Day, we also described the previously general growth rate for assets under management through 2 specific targets. By 2025, our goal is to grow total passive assets under management primarily with regard to Xtrackers products at a compound annual growth rate of more than 12%. And for assets under management and alternatives, achieve compound annual growth rate of more than 10%. After our Capital Markets Day, it was clear that the capital market would not simply accept these targets. DWS rather would first have to prove itself. There were several reasons for this cautiously positive response. Firstly, the financial targets that we communicated are ambitious. After all, earnings per share were still EUR 2.97 in 2022. Secondly, we first have to demonstrate that we are actually able to reap greater benefits from our excellent position. And thirdly, we have set ourselves ambitious strategic goals such as accelerated growth and Xtrackers alternatives, facilitating DWS' foray into digital assets and contributing to the European transformation. All while maintaining a strict cost management and against the backdrop of the ongoing investigations into ESG matters. Ladies and gentlemen, today, we can say in 2023, we have been focused on achieving these goals. And this has been positively received on the capital market. First, raw numbers. In 2023, assets under management rose significantly by roughly EUR 75 billion driven by market movements, inflows and exchange rate effects particularly gratifying is the fact that at EUR 896 billion by the end of the year. Assets under management were almost back to the record level of 2021. This is a good moment for a look back. We started 2022 at the aforementioned record level. During the year, however, the markets came under pressure from Russia's aggression against Ukraine and the interest rate hikes of the central banks. Accordingly, we kicked off 2023 with a considerably lower assets under management of EUR 821 billion. Over the course of 2023, assets under management moved sideways for some time despite good net inflows. It was not until the fourth quarter of 2023 that the capital markets recovered noticeably with a corresponding positive impact on assets under management, which were, as I just mentioned, were at EUR 896 million at the end of the year. Nevertheless, average assets under management remained lower throughout 2023 compared to 2022. In turn, this was one of the major factors behind lower management fees, which resulted in lower adjusted revenues of EUR 2.603 billion and adjusted profit before tax of EUR 937 million in 2023. Thus Earnings per share were EUR 2.76 Particularly encouraging was the adjusted cost to income ratio of 64.6% well inside the projected figure of under 65% for 2023. Despite another challenging year for the industry, remember, the flawless market recovery I mentioned, we returned to net inflows. Equally important, however, is that we have made huge strides in implementing our strategy. Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to clarify the progress on the basis of the 4 elements of our strategy. In the reduced category, we pledged to introduce the required cost cutting and restructuring measures from the outset. This was part of our target of self-funding the necessary investments in the growth and build components. At the last Annual General Meeting, I was able to report on progress here. For example, we completed the transfer of our digital investment platform to our strategic partner, BlackFin, and close the sale and transfer of our Private Equity Solutions business to Brookfield Asset Management. In addition, the implemented unavoidable internal restructuring measures one of which unfortunately also involved letting go slightly more than 15% of our managers. We continued down this path during the rest of 2023 and most of the reduced measures have been completed. At the same time, we continue to explore what areas of business are strategic for DWS while maintaining our strict cost discipline. Our cost management proved effective. In an inflationary environment and despite all the investments in our growth initiatives, the adjusted cost increase by just 2% in '23. As I said before, the adjusted cost-income ratio was 64%. Although it's not one of our reduced initiatives, I would like to take this opportunity to present our multiyear transformation program, which Karl von Rohr already mentioned in his speech. The project aims to streamline our operational setup and enhance our capabilities as an independent asset manager. In the second half of 2023, we undertook another comprehensive review of this project and made adjustments. Ultimately, in a nutshell, we are focusing on what makes us more competitive as an asset manager. On the other hand -- on the one hand, this means developing a policy framework that is appropriate for our business. And on the other hand, expanding external -- expanding internal function areas such as legal, finance, internal audit and corporate communications. Having made great headway in both endeavors, the finishing line is now inside. With regard to IT, however, we opted for a hybrid model. The same applies here. Whatever gives us a competitive edge, we do ourselves. This includes setting up a DWS cloud environment, for example, and developing our own applications. At the same time, we leverage economies of scale in our cooperation with Deutsche Bank. We continue to access non-differentiating services where the existing setup works well. For example, when operating data centers and networks or in terms of hardware. The review established that the cost savings we had originally planned were not feasible due to various factors, such as inflation and the increased threats for cybersecurity. Nevertheless, due to reduced transformation costs and the positive economies of scale achieved by using Deutsche Bank's IT, the hybrid solution is ultimately cheaper than a full separation. What's more, we avoid over complex solutions that are prone to errors. Ladies and gentlemen, a major focus in the value category, which primarily covers our active business was on changes in active fixed income where we also made personal adjustments in 2023. Despite the challenging market environment, the team managed to hold the outflows of recent years, generate new inflows and deliver improved performance for our customers. This is all the more gratifying given that last year, we made the commitment to anchor a positive performance culture even more strongly in the company. We aim to deliver added value for our customers ahead of our competitors. We even more -- we were even more successful in this regard in 2023 than in the previous year. For active in total, DWS improved the 1-year outperformance rate to 66%. The 3-year rate stood at strong 70% and the 5-year outperformance rate rose to 76% compared to the relevant benchmarks. This tallies with the fact that following the launch of the initiative in December 2022, by the end of 2023, we had increased the number of active funds with assets under management of more than EUR 1 billion by 14%, scaling our funds and improving their profitability. Ladies and gentlemen, active portfolio has always been the cornerstone of DWS and will continue to be. By focusing on performance and innovation, we are well positioned to succeed in an environment that remains challenging for active fund management. The general trend among our customers is clearly continuing towards passive products and thus towards self-directed business. Ladies and gentlemen, in a situation like this, you've got 2 options. You can either complain about this trend or prepare for it and actively support it and we chose the latter. As part of our growth initiatives, we also focused investments in the Xtrackers business in other words, in passive last year. The result, passive Asset Management generated strong net new assets of EUR 21 billion in 2023, thereby regaining our position as the #2 provider of exchange-traded products by net inflows in Europe. This is a clear sign that our strategy and investment is paying off quickly. The commitment to our second growth area, alternatives on the other hand, is more long term. We continued our investments in alternatives with strategic hires, the focus on infrastructure and the push into private credit. We will report on this in greater detail later this year. There is no denying, however, that the interest rate environment put extra pressure on real estate markets last year. For a player like DWS whose alternatives business has one focus area in real estate, this was not an easy situation. Nevertheless, we were also able to post slight new net inflows overall in alternatives in 2023. And the turnaround seems to be on the horizon in the real estate market. We placed particular emphasis on the European transformation in 2023. On the business side, for example, not only has our “Infrastruktur Europa Fund, which we launched last summer, generated solid inflows of more than EUR 350 million to date, we promptly demonstrated our commitment by investing in the Klettwitz Solar farm and 3 solar farms in Southwest Spain. Additional infrastructure funds will follow. For example, as part of our series of Pan-European infrastructure funds. Our cooperation with the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management goes beyond commercial interest. Dialogue between academia, politics and business is essential if you want to address the diverse challenges, but above all the opportunities of Europe's transformation that lies ahead. We are therefore proud to have established a center for European transformation with the Frankfurt School. The center opened its stores in 2023 and held its first conference this year, inviting a fascinating discussion between stakeholders from politics, business and science. On a related note, I wanted to bring up an issue that I feel strongly about, the European elections that are starting today. We are one of the few global asset managers with European roots. Therefore, we have a vital interest in ensuring that the U in EU applies it only to freight transport, but also to services in the future. Cross-border product distribution and a common set of minimum standards for tax and insolvency law are just 2 of the building blocks that would help establish a functional common capital market that would also send a positive signal for citizens. And a common capital market is what we need to finance the essential innovations and digital solutions, thereby driving the transformation but Europe is not just our domestic market in terms of business. Europe is also our cultural home representing our core values. It has become all the rage in recent years to view Europe as a behemoth paralyzed by regulatory zeal rather than as an economic and social opportunity. This plays into the hands of device forces that seek to destroy freedom. That is why the elections that have just begun are so important. Nothing less is at stake than a new positive European narrative, strengthening the Peace and Freedom project that is Europe as a geopolitical anchor. Reinforcing democratic pro-European but above all, diverse forces and the party spectrum is crucial in achieving this end. Let us go back to business. In the fourth category build, we announced our goal of developing new areas of business. Last year, we entered into a strategic alliance with Galaxy Digital, which specializes in digital assets and blockchain technology. And as promised, together, we made the most popular crypto currencies, Bitcoin and Ethereum, investable in funds in 2024. Moreover, we announced our intention to launch AllUnity a partnership with Galaxy and Netherlands-based market maker, Flow Traders, whose mission is to revolutionize the unchained economy by issuing a fully collateralized EU-denominated stable coin. This venture will bring us one step close to blazing a trail for digital assets on the blockchain. Dear shareholders, another challenge we had to face in 2023 was the continued struggle with the ESG allegations that were still pending. Karl von Rohr already mentioned it. The settlement on the ESG investigations that we reached with EU and Securities and Exchange Commission, SEC last September, was an important milestone. In its order, SEC found no misstatements in relation to DWS' financial disclosures or the prospectuses of DWS funds. The order also makes clear that there was no intent to defraud. Nevertheless, SEC imposed a USD 19 million fine for weaknesses in processes and procedures as well as marketing practices. We continue to stand by our financial disclosures and prospectuses of our funds. In addition, we have already taken certain decisions and implemented a number of steps to enhance our processes and controls based on the insights gained. The settlement means that the file on the ESG allegations in the United States is now closed. By contrast, the investigation in ESG at the public prosecutor's office in Frankfurt is ongoing, prompting renewed media coverage in early 2024. We are in talks with the public prosecutor's office to finalize the ESG process, but the outcome is not known yet. As before, bringing this matter to a conclusion has management's full attention whereby the timing is beyond our control. However, we can reveal how far we have come as a whole on our sustainability journey. I presented our revised sustainability strategy to you last year. We have identified 3 core areas. First, we want to make new climate-related investment opportunities accessible to our clients. Second, we want to further strengthen our engagement with businesses and other relevant stakeholders. And third, we want to continue to drive our own business transformation towards a more sustainable future. Let me dwell on point 2, our engagement with businesses for a moment. In April 2023, we published a DWS coal policy. With this, investments in what are referred to as coal developers should be included from portfolios in scope of the policy. This applies to companies that continue to expand their coal-related activities. Moreover, the policy excludes any investments in companies that generate 25% or more of their revenues with thermal coal. Of course, some will always say that this type of coal policy does not go far enough. Nevertheless, it is important to us that this realistic guideline will allow us to be instrumental in combating climate change in a way that is transparent and verifiable. Last year, we interacted with 27 coal companies. In other words, companies where up to 25% of their turnover is related to coal. We made our policy clear to these companies, along with our expectations regarding a coal phaseout. Besides coal-related topics, we even conducted more than 600 corporate engagements exerting influence on roughly 540 companies. Our focus was on good corporate governance and environmental issues such as climate change and water as well as social topics engaging with companies will continue to be an important factor in enabling DWS to maximize its positive impact on their corporate management and business practices, particularly with regard to sustainability issues. As an aside, naturally enough, there's public interest in hearing who we consulted when and what we discussed in detail. And there are also expectations that we will ultimately exclude companies in the engagement process. We firmly believe that engaging with companies is especially fruitful when the engagement takes place on an equal footing with clearly formulated goals and expectations. This requires a framework that is founded on trust which is why we will continue to exercise restraint in communicating details about individual engagements. Dear shareholders, let us return to our review of 2023. We have achieved all of these results and advances in an environment that has not always made it easy for our industry, but above all, for DWS. The fact that we were able to deliver, nevertheless, is due in no small part to the passion, commitment and unconditional customer focus of our staff. Therefore, also on behalf of my fellow Executive Board members, I would like to extend our sincerest thanks to all our colleagues for their great dedication and continued commitment. Our 2023 achievements included not only forging ahead with our strategy in developing our business. Our staff are also highlighted what DWS is all about. The fact that all employees had the opportunity to contribute was a core element of the objective. What truly sets DWS apart is teamwork, cooperation between employees, regions, departments and divisions generalists and specialists. Ultimately, we were able to advance the business because we have become better at combining our expertise. As a European powerhouse with a global reach and the history spanning almost 70 years, we bring together the perspectives of 16 nationalities and over 900 investment specialists. This enables us to create real added value for our customers and for you, dear shareholders. We call it connecting the dots. It is our value proposition, our promise for the future in terms of performance. Talking about promises. This brings me to my last point for the financial year 2023. We keep our promises. That also applies to the extraordinary dividend announced in December 2022. Based on our solid financial performance and as a clear affirmation of shareholder value we are proposing not only an increased ordinary dividend of EUR 2.1 per share for the 2023 financial year, but also an extraordinary dividend of EUR 4 per share. This extra payout of EUR 800 million is part of our commitment to return capital to you, dear shareholders as promised. Ladies and gentlemen, even though today's report is mainly about 2023, I would like to briefly touch on our successful start to the current financial year. Although we have been reporting cash elements of net inflows separately for some time now, we also started showing inflows from advisory services as a separate category at the beginning of this year. For net inflows and asset under management, we now distinguish between investments in cash advisory service on the one hand and those that are typically longer-term investments on the other hand. This is in the interest of increased transparency and to reflect the different nature and dynamics of the individual business areas more accurately. Driven by very strong net new assets in its growth area passive, including Xtrackers and supported by a return to net inflows in active, the company generated long-term net inflows, which means excluding cash and advisory services of EUR 7.9 billion in the first quarter of 2024. Including Cash and Advisory services, net inflows were EUR 7.8 billion, whereof EUR 1.7 billion came from ESG products. In the first quarter 2024, total assets under management rose by EUR 45 billion quarter-on-quarter to a new record high of EUR 941 billion, an excellent basis for future management fees for the full year. However, although the first quarter was encouraging in terms of net inflows, the environment remains challenging. We, therefore, anticipate a significant burden on flows in the current quarter, especially in the low-margin areas where flows are generally more volatile. Looking at DWS as a whole, we expect this to lead to outflows in the low double-digit billion range. However, as these outflows relate to lower margin areas, we do not foresee any major impact on our management fees. And all of this brings me to my outlook for 2024 and beyond. We intend to proceed with much of what worked well in 2023. As an example, our commitment to a positive performance culture. Furthermore, we have set ourselves 2 main goals for 2024. At a fundamental level, our core active business is about producing alpha. In other words, a return above what the market itself delivers in terms of performance. But our aim is not just to beat the market, but to outshine our competitors. This year, in addition to outperformance compared to the benchmark, we will, therefore, be paying greater attention to how we compare with the competition. Delivering added value in this regard is the only way to impress customers with the performance of our investment platform. Secondly, we want to continue our growth momentum with further strong gains in Xtrackers, a stable flow situation in active and an emerging turnaround in alternatives, we again want to post one of the highest organic growth rates among asset managers worldwide in this year. Looking beyond 2024, there are 3 priorities: we have the ambition to be one of the top 5 in the top 5. In other words, one of the top 5 international asset managers in the 5 largest economies. A key focus in that respect is to expand our foothold in Asia. It was already stated by Karl von Rohr. Our extended strategic alliance with Nippon Life, and our partnerships in Asia will help strengthen our position in Japan, China and India. Europe will still be our home market, however. Now more than ever, we want to establish DWS as the gateway to Europe. Our ambition if an international customer wants to take advantage of opportunities here, especially those offered by the European transformation, then we must be their first port of call and last but not least, we have made a commitment to help shape the future of finance in the years ahead. Specifically, this means understanding and managing digital disruption in our industry better than the competition. This applies to both artificial intelligence and blockchain. We are approaching these issues diligently and purposefully because one thing is clear. We want to drive disruption and not be driven by it. Ladies and gentlemen, let me conclude my remarks. DWS is well positioned and highly motivated to systematically implement its strategy and fulfill the promises that we made to you. We are confident that we will reach our ambitious targets for 2025, and therefore, expressly confirm them once again. We want to achieve earnings per share of EUR 4.5 for 2025. And our adjusted cost income ratio is to be less than 59%. We realize that this means a great deal of hard work, assuming that markets continue to be favorable. But what we can control ourselves is to focus on outperforming for our customers, keeping a tight grip on cost and consistently implementing our strategy. With commitment and passion, all of us at DWS will strive to achieve these targets again this year. Thank you for your attention, for your trust.

Thank you Dr. Hoops, dear Stefan thank you very much. You gave shareholders, a very clear overview of the current state of our company. Ladies and gentlemen, before we enter into the agenda, we would first like to commemorate the employees and pensioners of DWS who've passed. I would just like to ask you to keep a moment of silence and for everyone present, I'd like to ask you to raise from your seats. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for this moment of silent commemoration. We now establish attendance at today's AGM. On the basis of the available data, I hereby announce the following attendance. The share capital of the company in the amount of EUR 200 million is subdivided into EUR 200 million non-par value shares. At today's AGM, 178,646,451 non-par value shares with the same number of votes are represented. This corresponds to 89.32% of the share capital and absentee ballot votes, absentee valid votes for 160,103 non par-value shares have been received. All in all, this results in 178,806,554 non-par value shares being represented, which corresponds to 89.4% of the share capital. The attendance list, ladies and gentlemen, can be inspected in our password protected shareholder portal. Of the votes represented by the proxy holder of the company, shareholders and shareholder representatives who participate by electronic means are also recorded. The attendance list will be updated from time to time. However, without me announcing every change in attendance every time. The shareholders whoa are presently registered and proven their shareholding, can use the shareholder portal to exercise their voting rights directly by absentee ballot or via proxies and instructions to the proxyholders of the company or to change the instructions today. I will announce exact point in time as of when no further entries can be made in the portal with regard to voting, of course. Now if you want to access the portal, please use the access data you received on the attendance confirmation that we sent to you after you registered and properly approved your shareholding. Also, please use the password that you defined after your first log in. Now, enter into today's agenda, which covers 11 items. Item #1 is about the account of DWS for fiscal year 2023. This includes, amongst other things, established annual financial -- the annual financial statements and the management report for DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA established according to the German Commercial Code and approved by the Supervisory Board and the approved consolidated financial statements and group management report according to IFRS as well as the report of the Supervisory Board. Ladies and gentlemen, these documents as well as the proposal for the appropriation of distributable profit has been made available on our Internet homepage since the convocation of the AGM on April 25, 2024. Additionally, they were made available at our company premises and your financial statements and the management report as well as the consolidated financial statements and group management report have been audited by KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft. This is the auditor elected by last year's AGM. Neither audited by the auditor, not a review by the Supervisory Board, which also included the proposal for the attribution of distributable profit have given rise to any objections. The order issued an unqualified auditors opinion. The Supervisory Board has established the annual financial statement and the consolidated financial statement at its meeting on March 11, 2024. The approval is now up to today's AGM. Other than that, I say to my introductory remarks to the report of the Supervisory Board, which you can find on Pages V to XII of the annual report for 2023. Auditors, Mr. Fox and Ms. Adilova of KPMG are also present here in the meeting hall. The other items of the agenda a full text version of which can be retrieved on our AGM website as well include the following: Item #2 preparation of distributable profit. The general partner and the Supervisory Board propose to pay out a dividend of EUR 6.10 per share from the distributable profit for 2023, which consists of an ordinary dividend of EUR 2.10 and an extraordinary dividend of EUR 4. Items numbers 3 and 4 is the ratification of the acts of the general partner and the members of the Supervisory Board for fiscal year 2023. Item #5 is election of the auditor and the group auditor for the business year 2024 as well as the auditor for any interim reviews under Item 5.1 and the election of the auditor of the sustainability report under Item 5.2. Now, when comes to Item 5.1 and 5.2 based on the recommendation of the Audit and Risk Committee, the Supervisory Board recommends to let KPMG AG Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaft as auditor and also as auditor for the sustainability reporting, which is expected to become necessary for the first time in 2024. Ladies and gentlemen, Item #6 is the annual resolution on the approval of the compensation report for the 2023 financial year. Item #7 is about the election of the Supervisory Board. Mr. Bernd Leukert to resign from the Supervisory Board mandate at the end of today's AGM. This is why a new shareholder representative must be elected today. Based on the recommendation of the shareholder representatives and the nomination community, the Supervisory Board proposes to elect Mr. Oliver Behrens to the Supervisory Board. Item #8, the general partner and the Supervisory Board proposed cancellation of the authorized capital pursuant to Section 4(4) of the Articles of Association and creation of New Authorized Capital increases in cash and or contributions in kind with the possibility of excluding shareholders' preemptive rights also in accordance with Section 186(3) sentence 4 of the Stock Corporation Act, German Stock Corporation Act and corresponding amendments to the Articles of Association. The proposed authorization is to open up the possibility of expanding the capital base of the company and to replace the existing authorization, which will expire on June 8, 2025. Now, the German act on the financing of future-proof investments, the so-called finance in the future law, Zukunftsfinanzierungsgesetz, the legal upper limit for simple exclusion of preemptive rights according to Section 186(3) sentence 4, German Stock Corporation Act was increased from 10% to now 20% of the share capital. However, the proposed authorization deliberately does not make full use of this extended legal scope it remains with a volume of up to 10% of the share capital. Under Item #9, the general partner and the Supervisor Board propose cancellation of the authorized capital assumed to Section 4, para 5 of the Articles of Association and creation of new authorized capital for capital increases in cash with the possibility of excluding preemptive rights to except broken amount of fractions and corresponding amendments to the articles of associations. And again, this authorization is to open up the possibility of expanding the capital base of the company and again, to replace the existing authorization, which will expire on June 8, 2025. Item 10, the general partner and the Supervisory Board propose a cancellation of the existing and creation of a new authorization to issue participatory notes and other hybrid debt securities that fulfill the regulatory requirements to qualify as additional Tier 1 capital, AT1 capital. This authorization is to strengthen the capital base and to provide the company with appropriate levels of regulatory capital and it is to replace the existing authorization, which will expire on June 8, 2025. Item #11 is about 2 changes to the articles of association. Now on the one hand, the general partner and the Supervisory Board propose a resolution on an amendment of the composition of the so-called joint committee. Pursuant to section 15, para 1 of the articles of association, 2 members are delegated by the shareholders' meeting of the general partner and 2 members are delegated by the shareholders' representatives on the Supervisory Board. The number of members delegated by the shareholders' representatives on the Supervisory Board should be increased to 3. On the other hand, Item 11 is about an amendment of Section 22 para 2 of the Articles of Association. Now while the German Act on the financing of future-proof investments Zukunftsfinanzierungsgesetz, section 123(4) sentence 2 Stock Operation Act was aligned with European law. Section 123(4) sentence 2 of the German Stock Corporation act now defines the record date as of close business of the 22nd day instead of beginning of the 21st day before the AGM. Now this amendment makes an amendment of Section 22 Para 2 of the Articles of Association necessary. Now, ladies and gentlemen, finally, let me point out that counter proposal was published on our website in keeping with the legal requirements according to Section 126 and 127 German Stock Corporation law. Now pre condition for doing this was that we received a counterproposal before the end of the 15th day before today's AGM and that it required publication. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes my explanations on the agenda. Ladies and gentlemen, as already announced and in addition to my initial introductory remarks, I would now like to give Mr. Oliver Behrens as a new candidate for the Supervisory Board, the opportunity to briefly introduce himself to you. Mr. Behrens, is here in the hall, and will now address you. Mr. Behrens the floor is all yours.

Thank you very much, Karl. Dear shareholders, my name is Oliver Behrens. I'm happy to introduce myself to you today. The Supervisory Board of the company put me forward as a candidate for the election to the Supervisory Board as a shareholder representative, I live in Taunus, I'm married and I have 4 children. I was born and raised in Bremen and I studied in Hagen and Tübingen, studying business administration and the degree of Diplom-Kaufmann I hold a diploma in commerce study. My career started with an apprenticeship as a banker with Deutsche Bank AG. After I started out in securities advisory in Pirmasens and in the trading area of Deutsche Bank in Mannheim from 1992 to 2005, I spent these years in portfolio management and management of DWS and Deutsche Asset Management in Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Singapore. Between 2005 and 2014, I was a member of the Management Board of Deka-Bank responsible for securities, funds and trading. My last role being Deputy CEO. Between 2015 till the end of 2024, I've been CEO of the Morgan Stanley Europe SE for the banking group in Europe, ECB regulated with a balance sheet total of EUR 125 billion and 1,000 members of staff. Now in this role, I'm responsible for all -- I'm responsible for the extension of all Continental Europe business after the Brexit, and I'm responsible for all major banks and asset managers in the region. I started off my career at DWS, and I'm familiar with the business model. Now I'm coming back to take over on the Supervisory Board. Well, we might say I'm coming full circle. I hope that based on my experience, I will be able to make a valuable contribution in supporting, but also controlling, of course, the management of DWS Group. I'd be delighted if you were to support my candidate. Thank you very much.

I forgot to switch on the microphone ladies and gentlemen, sorry. Apologies. First of all, I'd like to thank Mr. Behrens for introducing himself. And I hope, ladies and gentlemen, this gave you an opportunity to gain a direct impression of Mr. Behrens. Now let us now come to the involvement of shareholders at this virtual AGM, i.e., ways to participate and to interact. As explained at the beginning, the general partner decided on the basis of Section 131 Para 1A in combination with Section 278 Para 3 of the German Stock Corporation Act to again make use of the possibility of pre-submitted questions and answers. And that way, you can get written answers to your questions and have the possibility of then asking potentially rising add-on questions during the AGM. Now the pre-submitted questions were then answered by the company by the day before yesterday and the evening and then published on our website and made them available there. Now Questions and answers will remain available there during the entire duration of today's AGM. Up until the stipulated deadline, the company received 71 questions from shareholders and shareholder representatives via the process laid out in the invitation. Ladies and gentlemen, when choosing the format for today's AGM, particular consideration was given to the exchange of dialogue with you, our shareholders. As was the case last year, this dialogue is facilitated via live contributions. Thus, you can basically enjoy all the rights as in an in-person meeting. As the meeting Chairman, in accordance with Section 131 para 1E of the Stock Corporation Law, I determine that questions may only be asked in the context of video statements. This means when making use of the right to speak. We look very much forward to sound and focused exchange and dialogue with you at today's AGM. Let me also point out for the sake of good order, that today only add-on question within the meaning of Section 131 Para 1D and questions on new matters within the meaning of Section 131 Para 1E of the Stock Corporation law will be answered. Now this does not limit your right to speak, but it means, however, that you should please focus on add-on questions to answers that were given before and during the AGM. Now in this context, plays no role as to whether you or another shareholders sent in this question or any question at all in advance if it was asked during the AGM. Additionally, the administration will answer questions on matters that arose only after the end of the deadline for the pre submission of questions, this is after June 2, 2024. What is decisive is that the question could not have been asked before the expiry of the deadline. Just about 30 minutes before the start of the AGM you have been provided with the possibility to register on our protected shareholder portal, if you want to take the floor, via the red by talk button. After clicking on that button a template will open where you can enter please all the necessary information on the contribution you want to make such as name, telephone number and your e-mail address. Additional information can be provided in the comments box [Foreign Language] in German. The Speakers will then be contacted in the order and sequence determined by me and admitted to the waiting room after carrying out a functional test in waiting room, we can continue to follow the meeting until it's time for you to make your own statement. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to ask you to register your request for the floor early so that we can plan ahead properly. On this context, I'd also like to ask you to mention or signal if you wish to comment on particular focus areas or submit a motion so that I can take this into consideration when determining the sequence of speakers. If You wish to speak again after having finished one statement, please, kindly register again via the red by talk button in the shareholder portal. Based on the experience of the last AGMs, I do not assume that we will need a strict limitation of speaking time. But please, bear with me that I will retain the right to do so. Irrespective of that, I'd already like to ask all speakers to limit their statement to approximately 10 minutes. So that speakers coming after them can take the floor within an appropriate time as well. Now, you have the same conditions for everyone, speaker and myself. And only to speak myself, we will see a clock to provide a point of orientation. After 9 minutes that we will have, the green display will change to amber signaling the request to please make time for the other speakers. After 10 minutes have relapsed, the display color will change to red. Ladies and gentlemen we'll, of course, be free to register again for making another statement. Now, in the meantime, ladies and gentlemen, the first speakers of the first group have arrived in the waiting room in order to speak to you. The current speakers of the list are [ Mr. Klaus Kneading ], [ Mr. Daniel Bower ], [ Mr. Tilman Massa ] and [ Dr. Maritzio Wagas ] this is the first group, so far, and we also have a second group, and I'll come back to that later on. Now ladies and gentlemen, or gentlemen, rather of the first group of speakers, please get ready. Before we start with the statements, let me briefly remind you remind you that you can exercise your voting right via the shareholder portal. If you properly registered for the AGM proving your shareholding. If you decided or will decide in favor of the absentee ballot or if you have or will give a proxy and/or instruction to the proxyholders of the company, you can cast your vote via the shareholders' portal also doing the AGM up until the time that I will be announced by me in the context of the voting process. Up until that time, absentee votes already cast instructions already given can be changed. It can be also changed via the shareholder portal. Now if you want to use the portal, please use the access data you received on the attendance confirmation that was sent to you and the password that you chose after your first log in. Now ladies and gentlemen, once I have a better idea of the number and the overall duration of shareholder statements, I will be more specific about the time frame. However, I would already like to ask you now to start making any entries into shareholders portal in good time in case there should be any Internet problems. Ladies and gentlemen, the first speakers are now waiting to take the floor. We will start with the first statement. Let me briefly remind you again to please stick to your speaking time of 10 minutes. I'll be most grateful for that. If You already registered for taking the floor, but decided then against making an envisaged contribution, please let us know. So ladies and gentlemen, the first speaker, as I said, will now be [ Mr. Kneading ] and then I'd like to ask [ Mr. Bower ] to please get ready to make your contribution. Good morning, [ Mr. Kneading ]. The floor is all yours.

Good morning, Mr. Karl Rohr. Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, my name is [ Mr. Klaus Kneading ] [indiscernible] and I'm speaking to you in my function as Vice President of DSW, the Deutsche Schutzvereinigung für Wertpapierbesitz Germany's biggest and largest shareholders' association. Let me talk or comment on the [indiscernible] on today's AGM. Once again, you are escaping into a virtual format, and you are hiding away behind your screens instead of organizing an in-person AGM signaling to us shareholders that you are appreciating us because that is what it is a lack of appreciation vis-a-vis the shareholders. That is what the virtual format is all about and Don't ask about more presence, greater presence in the virtual format. The opposite is the case as far as we know. The attendance at Deutsche Bank actually showed that quite clearly an in-person AGM [indiscernible] will remember, there used to be 6,000 to 8,000 thousand shareholders in the Frankfurt [indiscernible] in an in person meeting. But in May of this year, the virtual AGM, there were fewer than 300 participants. It is quite indicative that you seem to be signaling what your focus is on because your Supervisory Board meetings for the most part, we're held in person. This says it all. And in order to top this all, your employee, Hendrik Schmidt, calls for -- calls at AGMs other companies, such as recently at Volkswagen AG's AGM calls for a change back to the in-person format because otherwise, this would be a limitation of shareholders' rights. So this is quite indicative. And this means that you are preaching water and drinking wine yourselves. So please return to the in-person format. The numbers presented and the greenwashing allegations may be another reason why you're still having virtual AGMs. That's why I'm asking the following question. Adjusted earnings per share are EUR 20 million below the prior year's number. Earnings per share are EUR 0.21 below '22 numbers. On the other hand, the adjusted CIR rose by nearly 4%. So these numbers are anything but great. At the same time, you're telling us that you're going to pay a higher dividend than last year. Does this make sense at all in your financial report, you're saying that your top priority is, first of all, achieve savings as to make sure that we can finance our investment in value growth and build ourselves. Against this backdrop, does it make sense to decide about distributing a special dividend. You're saying that our company was one of the fastest-growing asset managers in 2023 in the world by net inflows without money market products. Please tell us more about the ranking so that we can see ourselves where we stand among our peers. Although in the course of the year, it's plus EUR 75 billion, we achieved significant growth. Average assets under management were lower than in 2022. Please tell us more details about the root causes for this? And what is your planning for the next 3 to 5 years? Our CIR is now 64%. In your annual report, you're pointing out that this is clearly within the range of less than 65% forecast by DWS for 2023. If you say this is significantly below this range. Well, this is not my understanding because I think we are basically at the fringe please tell us more about the adjusted CIR of our peers. As Everywhere and the entire Deutsche Bank Group, we have problems with our IT. So there are delays in our IT transformation products. Please tell us more about the root causes. Where do we stand in terms of IT? Are there any other construction sites, we don't know whether against the background of the IT problems? What's developing here is a good or a bad development because Mr. Hoops you were saying you're planning to use Deutsche Bank IT. This is what you said in your speech, Mr. Hoops. I'm not sure this is a reason for us to be happy you've rightfully proudly pointed out that in 2023, we managed to increase slightly the number of funds rated with 4 or 5 Morningstar stars with a volume form of more than EUR 100 million. Where do you come from? Well, what is the increase in terms of these ratings? Ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately, greenwashing is still high up on our agenda. Mr. Stefan Hoops, perhaps you can be more specific than in the annual report and in your speech today with regard to the current state of play. You've referred to the ESG investigations of U.S. authorities, which have been concluded. Please tell us more about the specific situation at this point in time, the public prosecute and Frankfurt has not yet concluded the investigations, as you said. So this seems to be a constant problem. And from my point of view, it shows that the public prosecutor have not yet found enough substance to sue us and submit this to the court. What is your assessment of the situation? When is this horror expected to end? And in this context, you're saying you have come to an agreement with the U.S. authorities. How and what is the specific result of this agreement? AI. It's a point that everyone is talking about these days, sometimes you find well, we don't know whether we should be happy about this, but where can we use AI in the future to simplify or improve our business? What is the direction we are doing research into in this respect. Then what has struck me is that Claire Peel and Angela Maragkopoulou left without you voicing any words of sense and you simply said that they had left in mutual agreement, please tell us more about the specific circumstances of these 2 ladies leaving the company. What is your view with regard to the future expected development of the share price? So much for my questions. Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like to use the opportunity to thank all employees for the work performed in the financial year under review above all. We would like to thank Karl von Rohr, the Chairman of the Supervisory Board for the many years of service as Chairman of the Supervisory Board, Mr. Karl von Rohr, I have always appreciated the dialogue with you and I've always found it to be particularly fruitful and productive. And I'm happy you will continue to beyond DWS' Supervisory Board as a regular member. So this guarantees continuity because we all know that new brooms sweep very well, but the old brooms know all the bad corners. So thank you very much.

Thank you, [ Mr. Kneading ]. Thank you for your contribution. In particular, thank you for the last few words you made. Yes, I'm sure we will stay in touch and in our dialogue in other channels. So the next speaker is [ Daniel Bower ] and after [ Mr. Bower ], we will have [ Mr. Massa ] and then [ Dr. Wagas ], [ Mr. Bower ], the floor is all yours.

Thank you very much for granting me the floor. Let me, first of all, introduce myself. My name is [ Daniel Bower ]. I represent SDK [indiscernible] Capital [indiscernible] and I represent our members and those that are using us as proxies. Ladies and gentlemen, I can only echo the criticism words from [ Mr. Kneading ]. The format of a virtual AGM needs to be criticized in any case. And what I find particularly sad today is that you've chosen the format whereby we've had to submit questions in advance and we can't raise any questions at this point. We always, of course, are happy to provide questions in advance in order to enable you to prepare for the answers, but I think it is very sad, we can't really ask any new questions here today, and we can only focus on the written answers the questions that have been pre-submitted. I presume that many of the shareholders have not yet had a chance to familiarize themselves with the questions and answers pre-submitted. So it's not a good idea. I've got a number of questions related to some of the questions posed by SDK and I have also got a number of new questions resulting from the speeches given here today. First of all, I would like to know how many shareholders are taking part in this virtual meeting. So what was the top number of shareholders locked into this meeting. How many shareholders have already downloaded the answers to the questions, please submit it by us. This gives us an indication as to whether or not this format is successful in the first place and whether questions pre-submitted and answers given are actually read by shareholders in the run-up to the AGM. Next, I've got questions regarding the current situation. Well, yes, we've got a number of construction sites, I would say. If I take a look at the annual report. First of all, of course, we've got on the allegations concerning ESG, of course. Now if I understood things correctly, you seem to have got rid of all the problems in the U.S. by paying a fine in Germany the investigations are continuing. We've had another read, which is not good because it's always negatively covered by the press, and you could have avoided that, I'm sure, because, of course, this will damage the reputation of DWS. And I think that compared with others, you seem to have solved the problem quite smoothly above all in the U.S., but I'm expecting you to also concluding this issue in Germany as well in the near future in order to get rid of it. In general, I think last year and above all in Q1 '24, our businesses in terms of net new inflows seems to have been running well. I can only congratulate you on the convincing numbers, in particular, for Q1 '24. Now regarding my comments or my idea is to be somebody -- to management. You shouldn't chase after every business and every transaction. If you take a look at what happened last year, you would see that also the CIR has deteriorated. And commission fees have also declined. So overall, fees declines, and there was a decline in income as well. And I believe you should take a very close look at what you're doing before you do it. You should decide which products to retain in the market and check every single product for its potential contribution margin and results because, of course, you commented yourselves in the annual report for launching lots of new products and reflecting many new trends. That's okay, I would say. And of course, you want to have products available to meet demand. But you should also take account of economies of scale because if you have a fund with EUR 300 million of assets under management, and this is probably not much fun for the company. They can't really be very profitable in the light of high costs unless you want to stable and let investors down, but that's not what you want. So I would only encourage you to closely monitor cost income in order to achieve the target of 59% that you have set yourselves and to be able to achieve it in the near future. What else would I want to say? Well, regarding actively managed funds, I would say you performed very well in passives and alternatives. You're also doing very well for active. Well, it's okay. I would say not bad, but I think you could be doing better. And my question is, how many of the actively managed funds will be the benchmark in the time frame of 5 to 10 years. And my question is, perhaps you could tell us numbers for each individual fund here, break this down for each fund for the actively managed funds and also tell us which of the actively managed funds did not beat the benchmark within this 5- to 10-year time horizon and perhaps you can tell us what you're planning to do to further improve these funds in the future? What else have we got I think the other questions we pre-submitted have been answered. I hope shareholders will read these answers then as well. But another point I was going to base is as follows. The Board mentioned the Capital Markets Union as essential. With the banking sector over the past few years, we've been able to see that many French banks have put the -- have started to take action in the German market, while this seems to be a one-way road, so the same phenomenon is not to be observed the other way around. So how is DWS doing in the EU, in the individual EU markets. Why do you believe -- I'm not referring to any specific fund business. But if you take a look at BNP Paribas, Concept et cetera, the trend seems to be such that in banking overall, French peers, French competitors seem to be pushing on to the German market while the opposite trend is not observed. So perhaps with regard to DWS, where do you stand in terms of your position in the EU and from your point of view, how does this relate to the Capital Markets Union and where do you believe where does management believe we are standing at this point in time? Because I believe it's not a very advanced position over the past 10 years. In my view, it haven't really been any major improvements everybody is doing what they like, I would say, and we are quite far from being able to speak of a genuine capital market union in the proper sense of the term. Next, my voting behavior for today, very briefly, well, the financial statements. Okay. I think we will approve that appropriation of net earnings, okay, the dividend of EUR 2.10, well at least 40% of group income needs to be paid in the form of a dividend as far as special dividend is concerned, we can only thank you. Here you are also keeping up with your promise of giving back profits to investors. So thank you. I will not approve the ratification active -- the management of the general partner. I think you've done it well in the past financial year, but we will not approve the act of management or the ratification of the active management because we believe there are some issues with regard to the strategy, we would also have wanted to have an in-person AGM, which is also what other companies are calling for. So -- and so -- but you also seem to be quoting for it at other AGMs. So you should be setting a good example yourselves. And Mr. Von Rohr, you're looking back upon a very constructive year. So I wouldn't see any reason not to ratify the active management of you as far as KPMG as election is concerned, well, you decided after why [indiscernible] to change to EY, but to retain KPMG. I've got nothing against KPMG, but they've got a long history of working with Deutsche Bank and the 10-year period has already been exceeded, if you include their services for Deutsche Bank. So I can't approve the election of KPMG, so I would suggest you should try and look for a new audit at least for the next financial year. I think you would have had enough time even now to find an alternative auditor. Compensation report, fine. Election of Oliver Behrens, fine with us. Yes, we will vote in favor. We can only congratulate you on finding Oliver Behrens, a highly qualified candidate and it's not easy to find somebody who's not conflicted. Who's got all the expertise, hasn't already got a sufficient number of mandates elsewhere. So you found a very good candidate with Oliver Behrens, and I'm happy to see that he is going to be a future member of the Supervisory Board of DWS. Regarding the capital creation resolutions or draft solutions. Yes, we will approve this as you've referred to exclusion of preemptive rights 30%. Yes, I think that's fine with us. Item 10 here, of course, we can also approve Item 11, changes, amendments, of some sections and the articles of Association, that's fine with us, there are some statutory amendments. So no problem, we can approve this. I have needed slightly more than 10 minutes. I'm sorry, but I would still like to take an extra minute to thank everybody, thank all employees. Thank the management. Thank the Board. Thanks a lot. I wish you every success and I hope that the capital market environment would remain this positive in the next few weeks and months so that we all can do good business in the capital market and wish to all the best for the future. Thank you very much for your patience. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen, and have a successful AGM.

Thank you very much, [ Mr. Bower ] for your contribution also for your follow-up questions. And also for explaining your voting behavior to us, it's always helpful for us to understand this. Now the next speaker -- and I can already see him on my screen is [ Mr. Massa ] of the association of [ critical ] shareholders and then he's going to be followed by [ Dr. Wagas ] of [ Greenpeace ]. I also would like to ask to get prepared, [ Mr. Massa ], the floor is yours.

Thank you very much, Mr. Von Rohr, ladies and gentlemen. I'm speaking on behalf of the association of critical shareholders and with the voting rights transferred to us, we once again ask you to show strictly more commitment to climate action and human rights protection. Let me once again echo the criticism that has been voiced about today's format of the AGM as the 2 previous speakers already said, and also the possibility of asking questions and follow-up questions. I know that's the legal requirement. We already saw at Deutsche Bank that this is a bit of an issue. And I fully agree with [ Mr. Kneading ] and [ Mr. Bower ] to a certain extent, ignore the regulations and the rules that you have set. We're not going to ratify the act of the general partner because we do not see sufficient transparency in getting to terms with the greenwashing scandal and other transparency issues. And in this context, I've got a couple of follow-up questions. But first of all, I'd like to come back to the greenwashing scandal and the way you have dealt with it. Now as [ Mr. Bower ] said, if the public prosecutor, again comes to your offices for another raid earlier this year. I mean this is not a good sign of trustful corporation. But I know that the proceedings are still ongoing. But here, I've got a question regarding the answer that you have given [ Mr. Bower ] and his association a follow-up question on question 16. Now what are your specific findings and insights and you were somewhat vague in general. You said you set up to working parties and you're doing a lot, but that's not really specific. And the SEC they have complained about the misstatement in the marketing documents. Although no such misstatements were found in the prospectuses, I agree. But can you give us a specific example of which specific ESG-related marketing statements, you would not repeat and how you have replaced with which kind of wording you have replaced these statements? That would help us very much. Now on engagement and divestments, we had submitted a couple of questions on this. And well, for us, it's still not really clear specific action you are taking in which cases, Mr. Hoops, you already stated it in your speech, and you directly responded to our crisis, which we had already voiced last year. Now of course, your engagement must take place in an atmosphere of mutual trust. Now we don't want to have any verbatim minutes of your engagement activities but maybe you could at least specify some clear targets that you have set? And what happens if there is some kind of course of violation that you detect there. What happens then? And then your answer to our question #36 that we had submitted beforehand. Now here once again, you asked for understanding, then you don't want to disclose any details on engagements that's something that's stunned me because you just published your stewardship report for 2023 and you have also now published your AGM speeches at the other companies you're invested in, for example, those of Hendrik Schmidt, and there, we have some details on your engagement with [indiscernible]. And here, we had a specific question, and that's why I'm so stunned about your answer. And so here once again, more transparency is something that you should also provide if you ask exactly this from others. And then in your stewardship report on Page 42, you report that last year, you sent 7 escalation letters to companies and you had there in that -- those cases concluded that your previous actions had not been sufficient. So which are these companies and what was exactly your criticism? And if you don't want to give us the names then at least the country, the industry and the rough topic. I mean, you're already doing this to a certain extent in your engagement report, which by the way, was disclosed just right before the AGM and that collided with the deadline for submitted -- for submitting the questions. But nevertheless, I've got a question on this as well. Now you mentioned one example, a Swiss mining group where you were not really satisfied with what their behavior. Now did you now check their sustainability report and which conclusion did you draw? Will there be further escalation? What exactly does the Swiss mining company do in order to prevent further escalation of yours? Can you still rule out a divestment in this case or not? And what are your activities and decisions regarding the other 6 companies, which you were not satisfied with last year? Have you by now send out further escalation letters and if so, how many? And which -- and how many companies did you exclude from your active management activities and forward reasons. Now once again, back to engagement. In your question -- in your answers, you clearly criticize the legal risks incorporating with other investors. I'm here you're asking for legal certainty. Now what are the legal obstacles that you have seen in this regard? And could they be overcome? Do we have specific examples of where a joint engagement has caused legal problems? Or is your restraint just based on theoretical considerations? And what does it take to get that legal certainty that you're asking for? And how do you lobby for that? Do you have any indirect or indirect influence on to the legislative process on a national European or international level? Is there any time line for these activities and efforts of yours? And you've mentioned that future cooperation will be dependent on these legal risks. Are there ongoing initiatives or pilot projects where you're testing some potential cooperation? And if so, in how many cases have you had concerns about acting in concert and have thus, also discontinued any existing cooperations? We have cited some studies highlighting the advantages of such cooperation. Now do you take these studies into account in your engagement activities and strategies. Now talking about plastics. Now we had asked for a plastic policy last year. You still do not have it. But in your answer, you still say that's an important topic also in your engagements. So which criteria do you apply? Do you go by the UN plastics agreement? And if not, why not? And which specific actions and initiatives have you taken since the last AGM to address plastics pollution in your portfolio? Also talking about Coca-Cola. Have you considered going for a more intense engagement strategy? Or have you also considered potentially divesting if the greenwashing allegations are more substantiated? We had also asked about your investments in autocratic states. Now you seem to have these investments. But you say to a small extent, what does the small extent mean? And how do you make sure that in these investments, your ESG criteria are met as well? Do you have a specific additional policies for investments in autocratic states and can you specify autocratic states which were ruled out because of violations of international agreements? And how high is your share in Russian bonds in percent and in absolute euro numbers and now have these numbers evolved compared to 2022? And would you also consider engagement activities with Russia? And if so, for what reasons? Or if not, why not? And one more general question about your engagement activities regarding government bonds. Do you have any plans to enhance your engagement activities to further countries? If so, which ones and for which -- on which topics you mentioned one European country and you send the letter to the EU regarding that country. What was that country? And what are your possible consequences if that country does not comply with your expectations? And can you give us more details on that engagement? Now do you apply the usual escalation measures regarding sovereign bonds or did you adjust them? Now my last question is about index providers. In your answer, you say that you're seeking dialogue with index providers, for example, regarding potential exclusions of coal developers and comparative reference indexes. Now have you entered into that dialogue? And what is the current status of this dialogue and with which index providers? Because passive assets under management are increasing where your criteria don't apply. I mean then the best policies for active funds don't help. Thank you very much, and I'm looking forward to the answers to my follow-up questions, and thank you very much for your kind attention.

Well, thank you very much, [ Mr. Massa ] for your contribution and also for really having read our answers so diligently and having thus raised the follow-up questions. We now turn to [ Dr. Wagas ] from Greenpeace. He is the last speaker in this first round. Yes we can hear and we see you [ Dr. Wagas ].

Excellent. Good morning. Thank you very much for giving me the opportunity to talk to you. I welcome all of you, dear shareholders, members of the management and Supervisory Board. Now let me tell you at this point that due to technical issues, I wasn't able to submit questions. The admission ticket and access data I had asked for have not reached me. Now Mr. Hoops, congratulations on the major challenges that you tackled in a difficult year 2023. But if you're really seeking a challenge, then try to register for your own digital AGM. And then while -- and this already brings me to my very first question, which goes into the same line direction as those are the previous speakers, namely whether you have deliberately chosen this digital format in order to avoid having to directly face your shareholders and stakeholders like our organization. It looks -- it really is contradictory that you're exactly asking this face-to-face communication in your engagement criteria. I will come back to that. The engagement is very important for your own work but what you're doing for yourself undermines your public statements actually but that's not my main point. Quite in contrast. I do have a couple of questions that have arisen, but many of them have already been touched upon the previous speakers, especially [ Mr. Massa ]. So I'd like to focus on the key open questions that I have, then I can hopefully also be a bit shorter. Now coming back to what you have said, Mr. Hoops. Now I and many others, we see many other major challenges. Now we had the heat waves and the draughts in the years before, which cost lives. And currently, now we have the floods in Southern Germany which once again shows very clearly what the climate crisis actually is going to mean for us. And at the same time, we have convened here at the DWS AGM. And DWS as you have said yourself, is Germany's biggest financing and company benefiting from the climate crisis, at least EUR 17 billion or EUR 18 billion of DWS funds are directed into oil and gas companies that are extremely harmful to the environment. And what is so dramatic is that these companies have positioned themselves in such a manner, which has shown that they don't care a d*** about climate protection but that they rather enhance their activities, thus further actually stoking the heating of the climate. And in your address, I haven't heard a single word about that special responsibility, which DWS as an investor has in this continuously exacerbating climate crisis. Now that speaks for itself and that makes me actually speechless and helpless. So maybe you can once again explain the way you see your role because it seems to me and to many others that it seems to be the new strategy of DWS to actually simply turn a blind eye to the climate crisis and that's exactly my question. Is that it simply ignoring that topic or pushing it aside and ignoring what's happening in the real world? Well, talking about turning a blind eye to things and it's already been touched upon before. But here, I would like to be more specific namely which lessons did DWS and you and the top management draw from the greenwashing scandal, specifically and also specifically, were there any clawbacks or damage claims, have been brought forward against your predecessor, [indiscernible] or whether you have looked into that possibility. And it seems that you indicated that although record fines have been imposed. There was no wrong doing actually. That sounds contradictory. And you said that DWS is not fighting any damage claims because this would mean that you admit that there was any wrongdoing. Am I right in -- with this kind of interpretation, or am I wrong? And this brings me to my next question to you and especially the Supervisory Board, namely whether you are aware of the public of how the public views the way you handled the greenwashing scandal because your damage has been -- your reputation has been damaged massively also in the public view, but that has even been rewarded with a really golden handshake. And I feel that this scandal has not been managed well and has gone to the detriment of the shareholders. And this goes back to my initial question. How do you deal with questions of climate protection. And in the pre-submitted questions, many shareholders asked for more transparency or more clearance or straightforwardness and your climate strategy. And here, you have described your communications or QPR strategy, namely, how you want to deal with, especially the oil and gas companies that are harmful to the environment. You don't want any exclusions and the reason is that you want to remain in touch with those companies. And of course, that raises a lot of questions. If you consider the fact that the big oil companies do not really care very much about this dialogue. At the last AGMs, many of those companies, but also behind scenes they clearly a bit far well to their climate goals, although these goals have not been ambitious in the first place. So does it really make sense to hope for any effect from those dialogues with those companies. If these companies do not really care about that dialogue in the first place, and your strategy, which you also once again highlighted in your address Mr Hoops, if I -- let me summarize what you call strategy, and I put this in quotation marks, you favor and approach, which, first of all, wants to exclude divestments in the first place, but on the other hand, your preferred tool is dialogue and engagement. But at the same time, you know that the oil majors, they're really rather moving into a different direction and want to massively expand their business. And allegedly, you also address this when you talk to these companies, but you don't want to comment on this publicly. So you say you want to be more transparent in your engagement process, but you don't want to disclose any details. And Mr. Von Rohr, you were just happy about the previous speaker announcing their voting behavior. Why don't you create a bit more transparency either? And if you say that you build on engagement, but at the same time, you don't want to use the most effective tool of engagement, namely a cooperative engagement together with others. So is this kind of a obedient versus especially U.S. regulators or what is the reason? And DWS does not seem to actively pursue its climate and sustainability strategy at other AGMs and doesn't want to really explain the logic of their voting behavior to us in the public. So ladies and gentlemen, I don't know how you feel about this, but this strategy of DWS, it seems like lost to me and if you look at the fossil energy companies, I mean, they -- I think they have rightly so have the impression that DWS is not serious about climate protection at least as long as the dividend is right. So that strategy of plannedlessness seems to be doing quite well for you, and you seem to be satisfied with that but with every day of in action, that gap between promising climate protection on the one hand, but not take any action, that gap is widening so you really have to walk the talk. Otherwise, this would, in my view, once again, being greenwashing, and you do have your own greenwashing experience already anyway. So regarding the risks about that walk, talk gap, I once again would like to rephrase one key follow-up question. What speaks against setting up a plan for this companies harmful to the climate, a plan which also includes the final step of excluding these companies from your investments. And last year, upon our request, you indicated that you would be working on oil and gas policy, but you did not specify any time line. And this year, the same again, why is it so difficult for you to provide clarity and then the binding a binding document, a binding policy? We're not expecting a document, which is going to be awarded a Nobel prizes, but I simply do not understand why you cannot come up with that policy. And that question is not only for you, Mr. Hoops and the Executive Board, but also for the Supervisory Board. And here, once again, I do not understand why you allow the Management Board to beat about the bush with these investment policies that are so urgently quiet and to wait until at some point, the regulator will force you to take action. So after all of these scandals, what prevents you from providing for more credibility, at least in climate action? Thank you very much.

[ Dr. Wagas ], thank you for your contribution. Ladies and gentlemen, this completes the first round of questions currently in the second round of speakers. We have 2 shareholders who would like to take the floor. If you still want to take the floor, please, could I ask you to register them now so that we can make the requisite technical provisions that -- so this gets us to the second group of speakers. The first speaker is [ Julia Dopslov ] from the [indiscernible], [ Ms. Dopslov ], the floor is all yours. Thank you very much. We can see and hear you.

Excellent. Thank you very much for that. So thank you very much for allowing me to speak and also thank you for answering all the pre-submitted questions. And a big thank you to all the shareholders who are present in the digital format. And I will not repeat the criticism that was waged on this, which I share. I'm [ Julia Dopslov ], I'm speaking for the [indiscernible] but I actually work for [ Agervald ], which is an NGO working for the environment in human rights. Now in the context of our work or due to the context of our work, it shouldn't surprise you that I also like to focus on fossil, fossil fuels and fossil fuel companies. Mr. Hoops mentioned it this morning, there is a coal policy, which somehow works and the framework that it set itself. [ Mr. Wagas ] already mentioned it, and I wholeheartedly support this with a view to the continuum climate crisis, it is essential to become active in the area of oil and gas. Now last year and this year, in your answers to our pre-submitted questions. you have actually made it fairly clear that you are not working at a comprehensive oil and gas policy or that you are discussing it. You will understand that this is not acceptable from our point of view. We find over and over again that DWS invests quite considerably in oil and gas and has been doing so and continues to do so. On the basis of our data base, investments in the -- [indiscernible], Total Energy, Chevron and ExxonMobil amounted to EUR 4.5 billion. We are happy to send you details on this calculation. Now actually, it should be about investing or change investments into sustainable business models. Those 6 majors when it comes to the past to as lower CEO to economy or zero economy, that was not a path that they chose. Quite the contrary, they produce 7 billion barrels in terms of oil equivalents and they can do another 32 billion. So in addition to this, these 6 oil majors in the last 2 years, spent about USD 7 billion for the exploration of new resources and you know this as you said in your answers. So these companies are clearly not compatible with the Paris agreement. And in Southern Germany, I'd also like to point out that people have understood that there is a connection because people in Southern Germany feel the consequences. But do you still insist on wanting to accompany these companies in their so-called transformation and not to divest? Now I believe a signal that goes out is, yes, we get a bit of criticism, but don't you worry, we will not leave you out on a ledge. We will not go away from you entirely. So this means that at the cost of the climate and people on the site, such as in Nigeria, Uganda, Mozambique or the Philippines, for example, you are benefiting from a very helpful business model. I have a few questions. Some of the questions were already answered or there was mention of them, and I hope you will be very concrete in your answers otherwise, we will have to ask again. I have the following add-on questions to the answers that you already gave. When it come to the global oil and gas exit list of [indiscernible], do you know about this? You wrote that you do not know how high the production numbers are. If you do not know the [indiscernible], the global oil and gas exit list, why don't you have a look at it? Because the colleagues who do this list are very, very precise and very diligent in the way they draw this up. Next question, when I asked for the oil and gas policy, you sidetrack and you say that there are some ESG products which use the investment standard of the DWS. Now question, is there any other ESG standards that products could use apart from the ones to you have on your mind? Also give us a number for the assets under management in those products, so the products that follow this ESG investment standard. And also please give us the number of the sub-funds and I believe, or partial funds. And I believe partial funds and I believe that it's possible to give us those figures, although you say that it is at a different levels I'm not asking about the asset classes or the up force, but the sub-funds or the partial funds. Now when it comes to the ratification of the act of management of Shell and [indiscernible] I mean your voting and your engagement, I mean the main point that is raised, and this is also the main that I raise. It is said that science does not agree as to whether what is more effective, divestment or engagement for example. Now I also refer back to my previous speakers. I believe that your engagement process is not -- does not lead to anything. Is not target oriented. Now if you say that we looked it up and we saw that some management Board members of Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell were not -- these acts were not ratified. You refer to your proxy voting policy and I'm aware of your proxy voting policy, but I would still like to know. And I'd love a concrete answer just for a change. Why the Shell and Total Energy's Management Board members are were not ratified or you did not reelect them? because in the voting policy, you -- there are several reasons for why this could be possible. Also, you say that it's difficult to assess the individual performance of individual Board members from an external position and to reliably assess that. And this is why I'm asking myself and how far do you -- when it comes to enter McKenzie and [indiscernible] of Shell and [indiscernible] where the acts were not ratified or they were not reelected by you. Right. Please also explain in that context, why your proxy voting policy has this as a standard because it's says that DWS votes against the candidate, if they do not -- did not treat questions of climate change appropriately. And I save you quoting the English quotation, English original. Also I'd be quite interested to know how you'll really go about engagement? I don't know. I mean DWS knows statistics, [indiscernible] Exxon you know that more than USD 7 billion are being spent by them every year or were spent by them per year for further exploration. You also know that they are amongst the big producers. And you have been in dialogue with these companies for years on their transformation plans and net zero targets which, as you know, are not compatible with limiting the heating up of the earth to 1.5-degrees. I simply do not know how these goes together. The companies expand and they do further exploration. You know that it's not compatible with the 1.5-degree target. You say that the transformation plans of Total Energy's and Shell are insufficient, you vote against the management board members, at least some of them. But you also admit that, generally speaking, it is difficult to say if progress of a company can be attributed to one specific engagement because there are different reasons that could have led to that. But Mr. Hoops, as you explained this morning, engagement is one of the focus areas of your activities, right? And I repeat, myself, your products are invested in those 6 companies at the amount of more than EUR 5.4 billion. And you still you still believe you are accompanying or you can accompany these companies on their way out of fossil fuels. Last question. When it comes to the investments in these companies, do you see financial risk? Do you believe that investing in those companies is a reputational risk. Thank you very much.

[ Ms. Dopslov ] thank you very for your contribution and your questions. Next speaker is [ Christoph Greiterman ] and after that, [ Mr. Felix Yahn ] asked to take the floor. And after that, we have no further requests for the floor. So again, ladies and gentlemen, back to ask you, if you want to take the floor, please register them now. But first of all, [ Mr. Greiterman ], the floor is all yours.

Thank you very much, Mr. von Rohr, members of the management, members of the Supervisory Board, dear co-shareholders. Dear employees, before I ask my questions, I'd like to ask everybody who committed themselves, worked for -- committed themselves from the work for DWS. I think this has not been appreciated enough. Now Women and Asset Management raised 2 reasons why this is important because diversity is a performance driver, and I want to see more performance by DWS. And also, I want to have more women in asset management because in a world where women have more influence on the allocation of capital would be a better world for all of us. Now let me give you a bit of context. Women and Asset management on the basis of the annual report on female [indiscernible] the share of women in fund management is at a low 12%. I mean 88% men -- of men is a no-go, but Germany is doing even better in inverted commas. They only have 6% of women when it comes to fund managers. DWS is already working on that. The annual report is elaborating on this and on the World Women's Day. Stefan Hoops communicated on this as well. On the basis of Investor Relations, 150 of the 165 fund managers are women, this is 27%. And this will be well above the average. And at an in-person meeting, you would get a lot of applause for that, and you would have deserved it. However, this count is a head count, count. I mean, usually, we will work for smaller funds, so the women's share for assets under management is much smaller at the big investment ships that are usually managed by man. So what is the situation here at DWS, as a example for where women work for many funds is the women for women fund of DWS, which always boasts about in their PR work as their commitment to women. Now what's strange about is, is 2 things. We have 30 female fund managers. The volume is only EUR 36 million, which was even decreased over the past few months. So question is when it comes to the sales activities or when it comes -- do they -- does this also get a lot of support? Or is it only a PR tool? Does it more get -- does it get more PR support and it gets sales support. Is it just a PR measure? Secondly, the fund is not diverse because it's managed by women only. What we would love to say is mixed teams which, according to what DWS say, bring the better performance. So we have the -- we get the impression that we will get a little [indiscernible] box so that they don't get in the way of the big man and the big ship firms. So now when it comes to performance, I would like to see diversity. I don't want to see any pink islands, but the one women to be integrated into the big funds of DWS. This is also funds where people take a leading role. And what is gratifying our efforts in the U.K. and in the United States at DWS, where Diversity is fostered by many different formats, for example, day in work of a front manager or the talent program, et cetera, et cetera. The question is, why don't you do this in general. And so these are activities that are good and laudable. But then there are also aspects which are strange and which makes me think that you, Mr. Hoops and your colleagues need more decisiveness, figures, parameters. There are hardly any industries where they play such an important role as an asset management. And there's hardly any company where you have so much knowledge as at DWS, but on the -- according to what Investor Relations tells us, the numbers that are accumulated when it comes to Women Asset Management are rather sparse. For example, the number of gender diverse investment teams is not being recorded. What would also be interesting to know is the share of women in the material risk takers. Now what's also somehow bothering is the women for women fund. So it is a -- it's always used to explain the commitment of DWS for women -- I already have that, I covered that. What is also bothering is that personnel structure is reported on under admin. This leads me to think that you have very a restricted idea about what HR work really means, especially as it is your heads and then also, we have a LinkedIn post of [indiscernible], which is fairly strange and Stefan Hoops commented on this positively in this post, which dates back to January after DWS Investments Day [indiscernible] said, we did it again, and he posted the picture. Which I cannot show you now, but you can find it on LinkedIn and there are lots and lots of men on stage and just 2 moderators in the middle and at the fringe, there is 1 woman and they carry flowers, a bunch of flowers. Now this comes across as -- this gives the impression that women are fringe figures or hold -- are moderators. This is a cultural artifact that we should take seriously. Now I close here thanking for whatever was achieved. And also, I'd like to ask you to be more decisive about this topic. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, [ Mr. Greiterman ] for your contribution and also a big thank you or your kind comments on our employees. And the next speaker would be [ Mr. Felix Yahn ]. After that, [ Mr. Gibble ] registered to take the floor. But first of all, Mr. [ Yahn ], hello, the floor is all yours.

I'm a small shareholder of DWS, but also DWS client. I own some products. My previous speaker, from [ Greenpeace ] said that he had not received the invitation and you chimes it. As Mr. Hoops keeps saying forever appropriate that DWS is a show-me case. I can show you my letters of invitation, what you probably can't see is that both letters were sent on the 3rd of June, and I received the letters on the 4th of June. And so of course, there was no way for me to ask questions and pre submit questions given that the deadline for the submission of pre submitted questions was 2nd of June in any case. I've got a question regarding Item 7. Oliver Behrens as your successor. Well, according to his agenda, he was Morgan Stanley CEO upholding SE previously. I've taken a look at the prospectus, which dates back to 2018, 13th of March, where Morgan Stanley was also joined [indiscernible] in the IPO of DWS but this was Morgan Stanley co-international PLC. I'm not sure whether or not there are any FX laws but you will know Mr. [indiscernible] or whoever checked this with [indiscernible]. But my question is did[indiscernible] 7 of the German corporate governance code, [ C 0.12 ] of the German corporate governance code because this is also my [indiscernible] advisory. And if I'm not mistaken, Morgan Stanley is also in the advisory business, but as Financial Times recently wrote somebody covered some sort of a hit piece against DWS, whereby you seem to have had an inflow of consultants, which also include in the perspective. At the same time, you said assets under management assets held either on behalf of and all clients managed by DWS on the discretionary or advisory basis. This is what the prospectus said at the time. So what is the difference between discretionary and advisory basis? And how do you define these advisory mandates? This would be interesting to note because it's a big issue at this point in time. And that was all from me. Thank you very much for accepting my question.

Thank you, Mr. Yan. This was really fast. Thank you. Next, [indiscernible] The floor is yours, and welcome.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, I am asking for notification according to 125 -- Section 129 5 of the German [indiscernible] Corporation Act. And my first question is related to other services for the Board. Please explain the 5 biggest items for the individual board members with the relevant -- stating the relevant amounts. My second question relates to the Works Council and the Section 37 1 of the German [indiscernible] at members of the [indiscernible] paid for their activities, they deliver unpaid work, but many works councilors see this differently and handle this differently, [indiscernible] Volkswagen Head of the Works Council received EUR 750,000 per year, including bonuses. 4 Volkswagen managers in 2022 was sentenced by the Federal Supreme Court because they had approved these high payments to works councilors at the time. Generally, works councilors can be paid in Germany under 2 models. One of the models is based on the customary payment of counterparts in the company and the second model is based on what's called the hypothetical career. So it is assessed what the career of the employee might have been like had he or she not been a works councilor. This was quite a popular model for paying many works councilors in Germany for a long time and it's written decision, the Federal Supreme Court said this was no longer possible. The successor to Mr. [indiscernible] who has succeeded him as Chair of the Works Council has now paid under a different model. In 2021, She earned about EUR 100,000 per year. Mr. [indiscernible] had earned EUR 750,000. Volkswagen had to cut the pay for about 80 of the 250 works councilors after this court ruling in some instances cut -- they had to cut it by half. One of the leading works councilors fell from Level 17 to pay Level 8. Well, you may not know what this means, but from EUR 6,100 to EUR 3,800 per month. So this will tell you more, I'm sure. Again, [indiscernible], my question is after the court ruling, of 10th of January 2023 by the Federal Supreme Court, did DWS have to cut the pay and/or bonus payments for full time trade union officials and how many cases was this the case? What was the maximum, the minimum and the average cut in the pay made to these works counselors in euros and in percentage terms? Please explain your model of payment for full-time trade unions at DWS, [indiscernible] please well for the entire DWS Group, I'm sorry. Please tell me the number of full-time trade unionists fully released from duty or the colleagues working similar functions in DWS Group, please sell us the top, the bottom, and the average pay for full-time trade unionists in the group. [indiscernible] for caution, I'm pointing out that you cannot refuse to answer these questions by referring to data privacy. So according to the court ruling questions regarding or conclusions regarding the payer individuals are no longer possible if you refer to, for example, pay ranks or pay brackets. Next, people with severe disabilities. There is a requirement under paragraph 160 of the SDG whereby employers have to pay a compensation if they do not employ a sufficient number of people with severe disabilities. And this is EUR 125 given a 3% requirements to employ people with severe disabilities. And the fine is EUR 220 million for the category of 2% to 3%, if they only employ 2% to 3% of people with severe disabilities. So please tell us about potential payment? [indiscernible] made under these legal requirements last year and please tell us what the reasons are for not fulfilling the statutory requirement to employ a certain percentage of people with severe disabilities in the group? Next, Supervisory Board and its committees, which of the Supervisory Board took part and which did not take part or only partly took part in meetings of the Supervisory Board and all its committees, for which meetings were proxies appointed to vote for them in the voting processes? Please tell us if there were any meetings where board members -- supervisory board members were not present or only present during a part of the meeting and also give us the names of the Supervisory Board members by telling us which members to part in what meetings only in the virtual format that is online. Please tell us about the qualification criteria for the members of the Supervisory Board and their allocation of these qualifications of the individual members. This is what we called a qualifications or skills profile. And please tell us how you would classify the members standing for election. Next, shareholders in specific terms, meetings with shareholders and shareholder representatives, how often and when did members of DWS meet shareholder representatives, shareholders or potential investors who are wishing to invest in your company please? And last for each date, which topics were discussed, please tell me about or send me the information passed on at these meetings. Next the cost of the AGM. Please tell us what the cost of last year's AGM was, what the cost of this year's AGM is and please tell us the 5 biggest cost items and the relevant amounts. Please tell us about the cost of food and beverages for last year's AGM and for today's AGM. Please tell us in food and beverage, please also tell us what this was as a list of 5 biggest items. Please tell us the maximum and minimum number of participants at the last AGM held in person, At last year's virtual AGM and today's virtual AGM, what was the cost per participant on average at these 3 AGMs. My next question relates to the notary, taking notarized minutes. What are the skills and qualifications required and taking into account in selecting the notary for today's AGM? The Supervisory Board of fees don't tell us about by referring that these are the statutory requirements. I would like to know for how many years, the notary present today has been taking notarized minutes at DWS' AGMs in the past. Should this be seen an analogy to the auditor. Are there any statutory maximum time frames within which a note might have to be replaced. Have you checked the independence of the notary, taking notarized minutes. If so, how? And what are the specific criteria used? Don't just refer to legal requirements or don't just tell me well we believe he's independent. No please tell us specifically what the criteria are that you have checked. What percentage of the total income of the notary were made up by payments from DWS in 2023. And don't tell me that you don't know and don't tell me you can't tell us for data privacy reasons. This is not permitted because this actually is a key criterion for the assessment of the independence of the notary taking adjustment. So it is a criterion that you yourselves have or should have checked. Any lack of information, disrespect, can dispose potential among the shareholders with regard to the neutrality and suitability of the notary public, all were to nurture such doubts. And the right to independence is important. This is a fundamental right of a shareholder because shareholders are entitled to obtain information because this is inevitable for them in order to exercise their rights as members and investors in the company. Only an informed shareholder can fulfill his or her role in the framework of the company. At the same time, there might also be a collision with rights [indiscernible] have and the legislation, normally, if a shareholder were to be deprived of the possibility of obtaining a clear picture of the company or the notary taking the address minutes, the rights under -- of shareholders also include the right to obtain such information. And both the Federal Supreme Court as well as various higher regional courts have handed down rulings in this respect. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Mr. Geber. You've referred to Section 32. We will take note of this. We will come back to this. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, at this point in time, we have no further requests for the floor, but we have received a lot of questions. So I would suggest we should interrupt the AGM for 30 minutes and then we will provide the first round of answers. If any of you, ladies and gentlemen, were to request the floor once again in the meantime, please let us know at this point so that we will be able to also give you the floor and take your questions at today's AGM. I now interrupt the AGM for 30 minutes, it is until 1:15. So there's 31 minutes, but that's easier for everyone. So thank you. [Break]

Ladies and gentlemen. So we are back from Frankfurt. I apologize for things having taken a bit more time. Although we've had fairly few contributions, we had a fairly large number of questions there. We're still in the process of answering some of them. But at this point at least, we would like to provide you with those answers that we have already finalized. And for this, first of all, I'd like to hand over to Dr. [indiscernible], who is going to talk on behalf of the management Board and the general partner.

Thank you very much, [indiscernible]. Ladies and gentlemen, good day. Some of the questions were asked, for example, by you, Mr. [indiscernible], which you had already submitted beforehand. Now we have answered these questions properly beforehand and published the answers on 4th of June on our publicly accessible website. Therefore, we do not wish to read out the answers here once again. Furthermore, today, we have received a couple of questions, which did not refer to answers already given [indiscernible] matters and which could also have been asked by prior submissions. This will not be answered today either. Many aspects are already included in our financial reports, for example, the annual report regarding the composition and qualification of the Supervisory Board members. Irrespective of this, however, we are very much interested in having a dialogue on these matters as well. So let us please discuss these questions after the AGM together with our Investor Relations department. Now before the AGM, we had already received questions from NGOs on climate action, biodiversity, deforestation, microplastics and other relevant plastics. At today's event, you will -- you pointed out the importance of these matters rightly so. Before giving you the detailed answers, let me start with some general comments first. Today, we, as a company, we present our report to you as a company. But DWS is not just a company, but it also consists of more than 4,600 employees, which currently are thinking about our earth either as individual persons or as members of the company. That's why it's also for all of us, very important to protect the climate. That's why climate protection is to be firmly established in our product offering everywhere. For that purpose, DWS entered into various commitments and many of our colleagues are volunteering in these activities as well. But our assets under management, we've got the responsibility to exercise influence and cause respective companies we invested in to take corresponding action. But there's also certain limits to the influence that we can bring to bear because we're not managing our own funds, but the funds of our customers. And we also try to live up to our responsibility by trying to influence our customers in the way they invest their funds. But at the end of the day, we have to act as fiduciary agents and invest the funds in the way customers wish to do so. And some of them -- of the customers already invest their funds in securities that have already been issued and which they have purchased from third parties or third sources. And therefore, here, we have only an indirect influence. These are all decisions that relate to sustainability. We comply with the commitments we have entered into in the context of net zero. We analyze all of the scientific findings on this [indiscernible] and take them into account in our decisions. And we also take geopolitical and social question into account, where we do have responsibility, for example, with regard to a just and fair transition. Now this brings me to my answers to your specific questions. I'm starting with various questions by [indiscernible] we asked about our actions that we have taken in terms of engagement and divestments. The question that you have asked and this is question 23, namely the question ever, we actually walked the talk and you also asked for some specific objectives. And to tell you what is not happening in the companies you're talking to. Now the questions that you have asked was already answered. When we answered various questions submitted before and, for example, question #46. Please, therefore, understand that we do not want to provide any further details on individual engagement at this point. You also asked whether -- you sent us the links to specific studies dealing with potential cooperation with other investors. So that's the important question of why are we doing this on our own and not together with others. And you asked whether we take these studies into account in our engagement strategy. It's already specified in answer #37. We perform our engagement activities always on our own, also against the backdrop of capital markets legislation. You also asked about engagement activities with countries. Please understand that we do not wish to comment on future engagement activities. As usual, respective engagement will also be entered to and will then be covered in our engagement stewardship report in the future. Dear Mr. [ Masa ], you also asked about the share of Russian governmental bonds in our portfolio. Now since early 2022. That number has reduced significantly from more than EUR 1 billion in 2021 to less than EUR 10 million as of the end of April 2024. Also against the backdrop of the existing sanctions, we do not consider Russia in our engagement activities. We are also asked according which criteria take engagement actions in terms of plastics. Now we cooperate with portfolio companies of various branches worldwide where plastics plays an important role. For example, we ask these countries to improve their disclosures in terms of packaging and materials used. Furthermore, we urge these companies to set targets for the reduction of plastics for the use of untreated carbon and in terms of recycling of plastics packaging. We also are committed to the development of alternatives and circular models -- and here, we've relied, for example, on the recommendations of the [indiscernible] Foundation, which are geared towards recycling and improving the product life cycles. [indiscernible] asked where we are aware of the global exit list for oil and gas and Mr. [indiscernible], yes we are aware of that list, and we also use it internally in our discussions. Then there was a question on greenwashing. Can you give us a specific example to explain which ESG marketing statements are not used in that wording anymore and which new wording you have adopted in this regard. Now you have to really see what is the difference between exaggerated and exuberant. And now we have said, we believe that we have used exuberant wordings, but not exaggerated wordings. Now imagine you've got 100 of something. If I were to say that's 200, then this would be exaggerated. That would be a lie. We strictly rule out like that. If we were to say this wondered how the greatest more wonderful 100 that you have ever seen, but this would be exuberant and we believe that this is what we did in the past. For example, by having said that, ESG is a part of our DNA, which obviously is not the case. I mean that's not biologically part of our DNA and we also said we are greener than the others. So we admit that this was exuberant, and we refrain from doing so in the future. And I think you also have seen that we act very cautiously in other matters, for example, AI. So we're doing probably the same as many others do, but we are very cautious in how we comment on this and these matters in the public or dialogue with others. So we want to use a very sober manner of dealing with these matters. And we want to walk the talk, which means we want to deliver what we promised. Mr. [indiscernible] you asked about our dialogue with the index providers, and you also wanted to know which providers we talk to and what the status of these talks is. Now the dialogue with index providers takes place which include, for example, MSCI, S&P and FTSE. On the status of these talks, we basically refer to our answer provided on questions HV24-67. [indiscernible], first of all, we very much regret that you had organizational issues in registering for our AGM and submitting questions. We are very, very glad really that you joined us nevertheless. Now on your follow-up question. You asked why, once again, we opted for the virtual AGM format and whether we did so deliberately in order to avoid a direct face-to-face discussion with our shareholders. Now in his opening address, Karl von Rohr already explained to you why we opted for the virtual format today. And 2 questions submitted beforehand also dealt with that matter. So let me once again summarize our answers. Now for us, it's about -- above all about reach, easy access for shareholders and saving costs. Let me also mention that at the last AGM, a great majority of more than 98% of the share capital represented voted in favor of the virtual format. And we want to offer a format that is a shareholder friendly one, and we regret very much if you gained a different impression than that. You also asked whether how we see our role against the spectrum of the climatic disasters and why we are avoiding that topic in all of our actions. As I told you before, the climate and the environment play an essential role for our employees and also for us as a company. Correspondingly, we take these matters into account in our product offering and our policies and also in our actions. I also expressed that we have the responsibility for the assets that we manage on behalf of our customers and that we try to use this to exercise influence. But I already told you that there are some limits to the influence we can exercise. At the last AGM, we presented our updated sustainability strategy to you which is geared towards the challenges of climate change and tackling with them. And we also would like to refer to our 2022 annual report and the climate report included in that overall report. So much for ESG so far, and this brings me to 2 questions asked by Mr. [ Bauer. Mr. Bauer ] you asked about French banks and pushing into the German market. Now as an asset manager, at our own AGM, we kindly ask you to understand, but I do not wish to comment on the strategy of French banks or any other banks. And you also asked in a follow-up question to the initial question submitted as #35, you wanted to know about the position of DWS in the EU markets. Now as described in our answer, GWS has got a global and diversified business model, which means we are represented in many European markets. Apart from Germany, we are present in all relevant markets, especially in France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, the Nordic countries, Spain, Switzerland, Austria and the United Kingdom. We also do have our offices and employees working in those countries. In Europe, the assets under management of DWS at the end of the year 2023 amounted to approximately EUR 633 billion, which represented about 70% of the total DWS assets under management. Now here, we feel well positioned in our home region Europe. And of course, it is our intention to maintain that position by focusing on existing and new partnerships. And also -- also in order to enhance that positioning any further. This brings me to the capital market in union. Fundamentally, we support the efforts geared towards the capital markets union. I already had told you in my address today. It would be very decisive to have to set up a properly functioning common capital markets, which would also provide a positive experience to consumers and citizens. We need this common capital market in order to fund the necessary transformation and drive it further. Now you asked about how we assess that situation, and as you will certainly understand what like to be very cautious on this because I do not want to judge the performance of the politicians because the current status of the capital markets union is not influenced by us, but it's rather designed on a European level. And with that, I hand back to Karl von Rohr.

Well, thank you very much, Dr. Hoops. Ladies and gentlemen, the management has asked me to take individual questions directed to the Supervisory Board, which should be answered by the Supervisory Board. And of course, I'm happy to live up to that request. The management has declared that they fully subscribed to the answers, I'm going to give you now. Now first of all, Mr. Bauer I've got 2 answers to 2 of your questions. As you can see we have divided them up between Mr. Hoops and myself. You asked how many shareholders have locked on today so far and what the peak number was. So far 100 different shareholders had locked on the shareholder portal and at peak times, 86 shareholders were locked on at the same time. In addition, another 353 participants watched the live stream of our AGM on the Internet. So all in all, the peak number was 439 participants watching. Your second question was how many answers have been downloaded on the Internet or rather how often. Now since the answers have been published more than 1,000 downloads of AGM related documents have taken place from the Germany and the English website. And this -- well, there's about a 50%, 50% share of downloads from the German and the English website. And I hope that you understand that for technical reasons, we cannot really distinguish with specific AGM documents have been downloaded. Dr. Vargas. You asked about possible breaches of duties and potential damage claims related to SG allegations against the DWS management, especially against the former CEO. Now let me answer this question as follows. In our annual report on Pages -- excuse me, let me start again. On Pages 5 and 10 on the report of the Supervisory Board within the annual report, we declared that within the Supervisory Board and then in the special committee that had been established for their purpose, the Supervisory dealt in depth with the ESG-related allegations. Having reached the settlement with the American SEC on ESG that -- at how committee, especially dealt with the impact of the closure of the ESG measure. In this context, together with the external lawyers of DWS, the Supervisory Board verified diligently whether potential damage claims could be filed against existing or former management board members for breaches of duties and whether these damage claims could be actually be exercised with regards to the SEC allegations. And that review clearly showed that such damage claims and this cannot be asserted because there is no reason to exercise them or to file them. And that's why we did not file them in the first place. And Mr. Hoops has got one more answer, so I hand over to him again. [indiscernible] answers to 3 more questions actually says to all.

So it's once again for a question from you, Mr. Vargas. You asked, what speaks against setting up a plan to exclude oil and gas companies that are harmful to the climate. And you also asked about the actual impact of such dialogues. So these are your questions, 40 and 42. As already stated, we think it is very important to support companies in phasing out their business with oil and gas, and we talk to companies in the oil and gas sector and also in sectors driving demand for oil and gas. And for that purpose, we use different kind of tools and we assess them also in terms of their efficacy. As part of the ongoing further development of our engagement and the voting policy, we have adopted our net 0 expectation for oil and gas and have rented it more specifically. These net 0 expectations and can already be seen reflected in our voting policies. In Europe, in all we use a comprehensive exclusion policy regarding to fossil fuels. In 2023, the respective list was further enhanced. We exclude companies from our actively managed ESC portfolio, which generates 10% more of the energy of their revenues from oil and gas extraction. We also ruled out companies from our actively managed ESC portfolios, which produce revenues from unconventional extraction of oil and gas, which includes Arctic drilling shale and shale gas. Furthermore, You, Mr. Vargas, also had a follow-up question on the oil and gas policy. First of all, I refer you to the answer to the questions submitted before and then question #73. As described in that answer, we consider oil and gas criteria already today in excluding certain product groups and this is also part of our dialogue with companies as part of our engagement and voting processes. On a continuous basis, we review our actions on oil and gas. At current, we are discussing an oil and gas policy and doing so, we also take the interest of the various stakeholders into account.

And now, one last question from you, Mr. Bauer. You asked, how many of the actively managed funds have beaten the benchmark over 5 or 10 years before cost. We've already answered that question. And I here refer you to the answers -- the answer to the AGM question 13. Nevertheless, we appreciate very much that in your statement you combined existing questions with submitted questions. You also asked which actively managed funds did not beat the benchmark over 5 or 10 years, you asked for the reasons why that was so and why how we want to improve. Our volume weighted 5-year gross outperformance rate at the end of the first quarter of 2024 was 78%. The remaining 22% by the end of the first quarter were not able to beat their respective benchmark of this almost half our products from fixed income of institutional customers. And the sustainable change of the interest rate environment affected that performance. Of course, the fixed income business was massively dependent on the highly volatile environment where the expectation towards actions by central banks changed continuously. So here, we have a major restrictions in the contractual policies that we have in this regard. And even if you have a certain market view, which would be favorable, we cannot act accordingly if this doesn't comply with the investment contracts. Now due to our investment strategies, performance improving actions are always taken within the framework of the existing investment policies. And we, of course, always want to, in this way, also contribute to the positive performance-related, performance culture in our company. Now, I know this was a very much legal wording. Now this means actually that in the investment divisions and also on the management board every meeting starts with the performance review. And whenever you convene and if you talk about performance on all those occasions, then this is the action that improves performance as you asked about. Thank you very much. Now I've got one more answer for you Mr. [indiscernible]. You asked about the previous activities of Morgan Stanley for our company and the effects on the independence of Mr. [indiscernible] whom we are suggesting or proposing as a candidate for the Supervisory Board. The necessary independency questions were asked and investigated during the selection of a candidate by Mr. Karl and also answered, as I mentioned, his activity for Morgan Stanley will be ended as of the end of this month. So we see no restriction or limitation with regard to his independence and no conflict of interest. Ladies and gentlemen, we currently have no further answers to your question. So we would have to have a break again. I'd suggest that we take a break of another 30 minutes. Mr. Hoops? Okay. Okay. He does have answers. Okay. So feel free to continue.

Things like live TV. So we have another 3 answers. Mr. [ Masa], you asked for concrete engagement in connection with Coca-Cola. We remain reticent when it comes to details with individual engagements, and we hope for your understanding. Mr. Masa also you asked about which EU country we send a critical attitude. So please bear with us. We will remain reticent when it comes to details, and we ask for your understanding. Another more longer explanation on a question recorporations with peers for engagement. Mr. Masa, you asked about the legal hurdles that we see against a cooperation with other investors and how these legal or statutory hurdles could be overcome. You also asked for concrete examples on how we try to influence the legislative process. If you understand the question correctly, corporation means cooperation with external shareholders who are not part of the DWS Group. In Germany, it's Section 33 follow-ups of the German securities trading Act that's something about this and in Section 34 of the same law. The consequences of a so-called action in concert are being elaborated on and stipulated. And the issuers guideline of the buffing, you'll find further more concrete responsibilities are being elaborated on in a guidance and guidelines of [indiscernible] we would like to refer you to Section 1, 0.2, 0.5, 0.10 on acting in concert [indiscernible]. So voting rights -- joint voting rights declaration have to be provided if shareholders agree on matters or act in concert with regard to certain matters. Otherwise, it would be in proper acting in concert. The continuous monitoring of voting thresholds and also living up this performance apart from operational hurdles would also give rise to risks which you got to an European antitrust regulations. So when it comes to elaborative engagement and acting in concert, there's no clear delimitation. And this, as we see it, we have no legally binding delimitation as long as this is -- and we try to bring about the clarification of that just in the beginning of 2022 or at the beginning of 2022 DWS already started cooperation with [indiscernible] also. I'd also talked with the Ministry of Justice, as state of the market participants. The examples given -- I'm sorry. So the examples were given and they were developed with DWS cooperating with other members of the professional associations, and we contributed to that. So -- and we provided this to [indiscernible] for comment. So we do not believe that it is sufficient to claim individual exclusions. And we would also like to point you to our 24/37 and 39. This is the answers that we gave to these questions or to similar questions. Mr. [indiscernible] I have an answer to one of your questions. You asked about the participation of Supervisory Board members in the Supervisory Board plenaries and committee meetings, and you also asked about the question as to whether participation was in online only [indiscernible]. Unfortunately, I cannot got a full answer to this very detailed and specific questions because we had not received them before the meeting, but when it comes to the participation of Supervisory Board is in the plenary and committee please, I'd like to refer to Page 10, Roman 10 of the annual report. It also gives details on virtual meetings and you will also find information on the competencies of the individual SP Board members and also the competency profile of the Supervisory Board, and it is also true for Page 8 of the annual report.

Mr. Hoops, you have an additional answer? Okay.

And for a very important question namely the question raised by Mr. [indiscernible]. Mr. [indiscernible], thank you very much for your questions on Women in Asset Management and also your statement on the value of gender diversity in society and in the economy. Allow me to a personal statement I mean diversity, especially gender diversity is very important to me. I'm a father of 2 girls, 2 of them listening to them. I'm aware of so-called Pink Islands. And I'm very critical though, no doubt about it. This is not the only reason why you can rest assured that myself and also the entire senior management takes this very seriously. Unfortunately, we cannot answer your very specific questions because they were not provided beforehand. This is because we don't want to create a precedency so we -- the answer was not [indiscernible] before, or let me give you -- well, thank you again for many good imports and incentives that you gave us and which we are happy to discuss with you again, please get in contact with our Investor Relations department or write [indiscernible] directly to me because I really find this thrilling. DWS Group is advocating a diverse culture with respect the diversity in its society, its clients and because diversity is of central importance, we have a continuous focus on the following aspects: a, buildup of talented and diverse teams in order to optimize a performance and results. The creation of a respectful and inclusive environment where all people can live up to the full potential. Thirdly, strengthening our relationship with stakeholders, customers, partners, regulators, potential employees and society. We are convinced that the diversity and inclusion is beneficial for innovation, and they make a country. And they are important for taking a well-balanced decisions, which are, again, a prerequisite for the success of the company. We aspire to create an inclusive culture with respect diversity of society and our customers, our stakeholders and create an environment where every perspective accounts and every voice is heard. This gets us closer together, and it helps to create an inspiring work culture. Now when it comes to an inclusive environment, work environment, we were building up partnerships in all areas of the world. They do not only help us to promote the internal agenda, but they also help us to exchange, tried and tested procedures and best practices and to exciting influence in society. For example, the DWS and the fund women now create a talent program, for example, or an event in order to thrive diversity, drive diversity in the company. In 2023, the investment division, so the division I'm responsible for, we established an initiative which concentrates on female talent in London and New York is where we had these events. We can discuss how this can still be improved, but it was taken very seriously. Studies on diversity are taken very seriously. And also -- and we do not question the importance of diversity underperformance. It's a target. It's our aim to have the best teams from diverse cultures, backgrounds, changers, beliefs, sexual orientation, age groups, experience, et cetera, and to gain them and to hold them to maintain them. And thank you very much for a very good question.

Ladies and gentlemen, there is still some quite some outstanding question and answers. We are still working on them. So I would again suggests that we have a break of another approximately 30 minutes. So between 14:40 and 14:45 we'll be back on. And thank you very much, and see you soon. [Break]

All right. Ladies and gentlemen, we will continue the AGM with the answering of shareholders' questions. Currently, I have no further requests for the floor. I would thus close the list of speakers in 10 minutes. So if you still want to make a statement, please register now so that we can take this into consideration. Other than that, the list of speakers will close in 10 minutes. We would continue now, and Dr. Hoops has additional answers to your questions.

Thank you very much, Dear Karl. So we will start with sovereign bonds in general and of autocratic states. Just previously before I answer officially. Now as a shareholder of a company of various means of access. So if you are a bondholder, engagement is much more difficult than as a shareholder. And as a bondholder of an autocratic state, you can very well imagine that it's not that difficult to get -- to make a phone call with the Minister of Finance, for example. And this is why we hold hardly any positions of bonds. Now there's another question. We -- as we understand your question, you asked us as to whether the usual escalation steps are also applicable to bonds as it to sovereign bonds. Well, we usually have different engagement tools and measures when it comes to engagement with state parties. We refer to the principles of responsible investments when it comes into actually state parties. AMG and ESG engagements with sovereign debt investors is a document from 2022, which gives you additional details on this. Also you asked us about our current assets. Our current assets in the States mentioned there as of the 30th of April 2024 is in the 2-digit millions. Now -- and also when it comes to ESG exclusion criteria, we would like to refer you to our answers 36 and 47. We here described how states of Monte parties Freedom House are taken into consideration. When it comes to exclusions and these exclusion criterias are reviewed on a regular basis. Please bear with us that we cannot -- will not give you any information on individual exclusion criteria of states. Now engagement in general referring well as the company is Ms. [indiscernible], you asked the following: how in the context of our engagement process, we deal with the 6 big oil and gas companies? Now in the context of our net 0 ambitions, we want to work towards a reduction of emissions in the real economy. And this is also what informs our engagement with the oil and gas companies. Amongst other things, we ask for investment and production plans that are geared towards the 1.5 degrees goal. We would also like to refer you to our answers to the presubmitted questions, which is 73 -- answer 73, which also informs you about our voting behavior. One measure would, for example, be the reduction of methane emissions because this is one of the most promising ways of reducing emissions. However, if you were to sell our shares, for example, we would not have any influence whatsoever. Mr. Masa, you asked about our escalation letters to several companies. These escalation letters were sent to mining companies, basic consumption goods industry and manufactured materials. We cannot give you any further details, please bear with us. Mr. [indiscernible], you asked about why the individual performance of Management Board members are taken into consideration in the context of proxy voting. As already mentioned by you, we basically exert our voting rights on the basis of the criteria that are explained in the corporate governance and proxy voting policy. When it comes to the responsibility of Management Board members with regards to climate change, the passage that you quoted is part of our policy. And this is why when it comes to [ Central Mackenzie, the -- and Catherine Hughes ] and also the CEO of Total Energies, Patrick Pouyanné. I hope I pronounced these names correctly. So we voted against them in that context. Mr. Masa, you asked about additional details with regard to our escalation letters. As already mentioned, and I hope you bear with us, we are fairly -- we are fundamentally reticent when it comes to information on individual engagement. So please bear with us. Wherever we can see no progress being made by our engagement, we try to use our proxy -- our voting rights and/or make public statements during the AGM. The last consequence can also be selling several shares of these companies from our portfolios. This would include the case of the Swiss mining company, for example. The overall number of companies excluded for different product groups results from various factors, such as, for example, changing information of ESG data providers. Mr. Giblat, he asked about discussions with the shareholder representatives to potential investors. DWS during the course of the year has more than 100 discussions with investors. The content are provided on our Investor Relations website for shareholder representatives and other investors parties. We accordingly invite you to gain information from this website, and please get in contact if you have further questions. Also, Mr. Giblat, you asked about the cost for food and drink of last year's AGM and of today's AGM and the 5 biggest positions. You also asked about the cost of the last AGM that was held as an in-person meeting and today's virtual meeting. We can tell you that cost for food and drink last year were about -- last year was EUR 18,000. And this year was about EUR 27,000. The increase in costs have to do with inflation and costs and also a higher number of employees and service providers on site. We are serving usual finger food and drinks. Please bear with us if we don't give you all the details. The overall cost for the in-person meeting in 2019 were about EUR 1.1 million. The 5 biggest positions were technology, EUR 300,000; buildings, EUR 300,000; location, EUR 200,000; legal advice with about EUR 100,000; and then also catering, EUR 15,000 for 2019. So the overall cost for the virtual AGM -- so we had this for 2019. And now the virtual AGM in 2023 was about EUR 700,000. The 5 biggest positions were technology, about EUR 220,000; building, EUR 200,000; location about EUR 160,000; legal advice, about EUR 100,000; and catering, about EUR 18,000. So today's AGM, we reckon that the overall cost will be slightly above the cost of the last year. And also Mr. Giblat, you asked about the number of participants in the last in-person meeting than last year's AGM and this year's AGM. You also asked about the average cost per participant for these 3 meetings. These are the answers. The number of participants for today's AGM is at 439 participants. And the resulting average cost per participant for 2024 cannot be established yet finally, but will approximately be close to 2023. So the cost per participant. And Mr. Bauer, you asked us about the actively managed funds that did not be the benchmark. And I mentioned that we hope that in the future, many of our funds as many as possible will be the benchmark. And you asked us about those that do not beat the benchmark. The number of actively managed funds that do not beat the benchmark is very broad. This would also, for example, include special funds -- specialty funds of institutional clients that we cannot give you the name of. The number of mutual funds can be found on the website of DWS. Also, the reasons and measures for performance improvement, we explained during my speech. Thank you very much. There are 2 additional questions that I want to give you answers too. Dr. Vargas, you asked why the Management Board is allowed to wait when it comes to climate change and how we can become more credible when it comes to climate protection. Let me make this very clear. DWS does have a sustainability strategy. This also includes climate change and also it's entirely up to the management. And of course, the Supervisory Board on a regular basis and also on a continuous basis is dealing with that matter. And we have a comprehensive dialogue on that, and we support the sustainability strategy of DWS explicitly so. And the Supervisory Board also believes that the sustainability strategy is credible. Over and above this, I would also like to invite you to -- you check the reports of the Supervisory Board when it comes to the development of the sustainability strategy. Mr. Giblat, your second question was -- Mr. Giblat, second question was from you. You asked for our notary public, Mr. [ Habeda ] takes a minute here. Mr. [ Habeda ] is an expert on AGMs and [indiscernible] of the AGMs. He does not work as a lawyer for DWS, but exclusively as a notary public for our AGMs. As a notary public, he has also taken the minutes of our AGMs of the previous years, which he has done very reliably and well. So we have -- we do not have an invoice for him for this year, but you please assume that the cost will be somewhere between EUR 25,000 and EUR 30,000. And we also ask Dr. [ Habeda ]. He said this sum is not a major share -- does not consider a major share of his income.

Okay. We have 2 additional requests for the floor, Mr. Masa on the one hand. So Mr. Masa, you are already -- and the second request for the floor. The third round of questions come from Mr. Geber -- he is brought into the waiting room. Mr. Masa, the floor is all yours.

Mr. Von Rohr, sorry for asking again, it's a bit problematic with the virtual AGMs to ask additional questions when there are already answers, but the list of speakers is already closed, and this is why I had already registered for and further slot -- speaking slot. Okay, right well, you -- I mean, you're trying to make really, really sure that you don't give answers to questions, which had already been answered. Now again, on your discussion on the potential oil and gas policy. Well, I mean, discussions have been going back and forth. When do you finally come up with this policy or think about coming up with a policy, I mean we go from AGM to AGM. And sooner or later, companies will come up with a policy for oil and gas. So when will we have your policy for oil and gas, just give us an idea. I mean, if you have any plans, but when do you want to have this. And then also index funds and green washing, an additional concrete additional question. The new rules -- the new ESMA rules when it comes to ESG, the naming of ESG funds, how do you want to implement this? How many of the ESG funds will be renamed and then how many will the investment strategy really be adjustment? What is your procedure when it comes to ESG, ETFs in particular? And do you believe that in indices will be adjusted by the index providers?

I mentioned this in my speech. The -- I mean, the way it means you deal with ESG for ETFs is very important for us. And from your explanations, I also believe that it's also a new interest to find solutions here. Thank you very much, Mr. Masa for this additional question. Now as announced, I will now close the list of speakers. The second speaker in the third around is Mr. Geber. And Mr. Geber, the floor is all yours.

Chairman, ladies and gentlemen, I have additional answers -- questions on the answers. Now when it comes to food and drinks, it's EUR 27,000. It's a virtual AGM. This seems to be quite a number. Now you said that it's finger food, you're spending all this money on. Now EUR 27,000 on finger food, I mean you can buy oysters for EUR 27,000 plus champagne. So here comes an additional question. What exactly are you serving? The 5 biggest positions, so the 5 biggest position of food and drinks, which food? And then you mentioned inflation from EUR 18,000 to EUR 27,000 is not in keeping with the inflation. If you say that it was inflation, which did that. I really doubt your financial expertise. I think it is absolutely impossible for you to give me such an answer. Also give me the number of people you employ and days as a mandate and also the average spend per person for food and drink. Now location, EUR 160,000 is the number you gave me, and this is surprising for virtual AGM, aren't you able to have your virtual AGM on your own premises? Why did you have to rent a location for EUR 160,000 plus EUR 200,000 additional for trade fair construction or exhibition stand construction. EUR 200,000, you can save that and pay us more dividend. So why do you need a trade fair construction services? Why do you need a location? And why are your own premises not sufficient in order to send us virtual broadcast of your Management Board and the Supervisory Board? I mean when it comes to 439 participants, it could be a bit more or less, about EUR 1,000 per participant for trade fair construction and location only, you should ask yourself as to whether it is appropriate and sustainable. I mean sustainable in the means of -- in the way of -- how are you using what is being built by the trade for construction companies? Do you use them again? Do you warehouse them? How sustainable is that? Now cost per participant, you only gave us a number of participants, 439, and average cost. Please give me the costs of the AGM per participant. So it's funny. I reckon that you record the questions, so it's funny that you give me such answers. I have the impression that you don't want to give me an answer at all, but you can counteract this impression by just finally giving me an answer. And then on the question of the qualification of the notary public taking the minutes, he said Dr. [ Habeda ] is an explicit expert, also having proven his value at AGMs. If he were an expert, he would know that there are court rulings on these matters. So if he does not answer this question, although he knows, he has the information to do so, this is -- then his character is questionable if you cannot answer because he is not aware of the judgment, this shows that he's actually anything, but an expert. So I mean, the fact that this is not an essential part of his income is surprising for a lawyer also, I mean, not an essential or material part of this income is not an answer. Please tell us what is an essential or material part of the income and what isn't.

Thank you very much, Mr. Geber. This brings us to the end of today's list of speaker. Ladies and gentlemen, I think we -- it has been proven that also virtual format allows for a meaningful exchange on matters of the agenda. We still now have some answers that are still outstanding, and we will take a bit of time, which means that we, again, may take a short break, 15 minutes. So we will be back at around 15:40. Thank you. [Break]

Ladies and gentlemen, the AGM has continued. We're getting closer to the last answers to the questions and so the voting process. So let me point out here that you have another 10 minutes until [ 15:50 ] to place your instructions and voting proxies to the company proxies and representatives. And by then, we will also close the possibility of submitting absentee ballot votes, and we will then capture the results of the voting process. We've got a few more answers for you. So back to Dr. Hoops.

Thank you. First of all, I have to slightly correct announce I gave earlier. Mr. Masa, you asked me about the government bonds. And one of the questions or the partial questions related to our inventory in terms of bonds in autocratic states. And I was saying it's in the double-digit million range. But I have to correct this, it's in the triple digit million range, our portfolio. Nevertheless, the portfolio accounts for less than 0.01% of our assets under management. Next, I would like to answer your questions, Mr. Geber. Just as we did last year, where in the end, we had a bilateral meeting from person to person to answer a few open questions. Of course, we ask a lot of critical questions at AGMs ourselves and of course, this right is a right that you, our shareholders have this right. That's why we'd like to answer your questions. You, first of all, asked about why the prices for catering food and beverages had increased by 50% year-on-year. I gave you a few factors, inflation, employees, et cetera. But to specify this, we had an additional day for the rehearsal. So an extra day, we had a few more people. So last year, about 100 DWS employees were involved. But of course, we've also got technicians, engineers, security staff. What we have here, what we're offering is healthy foods, sandwiches, [ museli ] food, salads, nothing spectacular, relatively normal [indiscernible] and water, as you may have noticed, and a few other nonalcoholic beverages. Nothing out of the ordinary. So overall, this is the reason why there has been a slight cost increase, a few extra people, an extra day, et cetera. So this has led to the increase to EUR 27,000. And the second complex of questions related to the location. So anything to do with this location, why we can't plan the AGM at our own premises. But, of course, there may well be a controversy about virtual versus in-person AGM. But if you decide to do a virtual AGM, it's got to be done properly. So even, for example, if we were to contact our main investor, we wouldn't have a corresponding hall available. So we need a big hall in Frankfurt with all the technical equipment that we simply don't have in our own premises. Next, you asked about ESG, but we can comply with all the requirements. And I can see it. Yes. Clearly so in selecting our service providers, we follow a very clear ESG requirements that we have specified ourselves, and you were also asking about whether we store any equipment and reuse it, yes. So for example, the [indiscernible] that we're using here is the same one as the one we used last year because I have a special arrangement there where I can put different glasses of water. And you also asked about the cost per participant, but it can't be the difficult if we know the number of participants. And then you can divide the cost for the food and beverages by the number of participants. It's EUR 650 to EUR 1,750 per shareholder that is locked into today's AGM. So that's the cost person. Thank you very much for your active participation. This has been very useful. Next, Mr. [indiscernible], you asked about the assets applied for the DWS ESG portfolio, where we report good number active, passive, including extractors and alternatives. For 2023, we showed the ESG assets per asset class. In total, these were EUR 133.5 billion. This includes actively managed mutual funds [indiscernible] in the EU where the ESG investment standard applies. The remaining assets business plus alternatives and passive are based on ESG standards in line with the relevant properties. Next Mr. Masa, you had pointed out in your contribution that when you register, sometimes you don't know where the question may have asked, and we responded to you in the meantime, and you were saying what about the oil and gas policy. And has this been completed in the meantime? Yes, in the meantime, we had answered that question. But regarding the oil and gas policy, we can therefore refer you to the answers we'd already given, so we don't have anything to add at this point in time. And then Mr. Masa, you also asked about the new ESMA guidelines on the designation of ESG funds and whether we are planning to implement them and to use them and how many funds would be affected? And how our strategy would be affected? You also ask about ESG, ETFs and index providers. In general, we welcome the further development of the ESG environment, which enhances the transparency and comparability of sustainability-related future products. On the basis of the final ESMA report, we have already started analyzing our own products on that basis. The final ESMA guidelines will be translated into the respective EU languages on the ESMA website. The final impact assessment will be carried out once a detailed analysis is taking place. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you very much. Thank you Mr. Hoops, and thank you to the other speakers for your questions and contributions. And thank you to Stefan Hoops for the comprehensive answers to these questions. I hope we've been able to give you all the information you had asked for. This takes us to the voting process. As I already mentioned, we will close the portal at [ 16:50 ]. Let me, first of all, explain to you the voting process. At today's AGM, the company's proxy on the basis of the instructions he has received will cast the votes. In the [indiscernible] of the votes, these votes will then be cast. The changes in the instructions and proxy votes that have been submitted before the portal is closed, will, of course, be taken into account and will be included in the electronic system. Of course, the absentee ballot votes will also be included and fed into the electronic accounting system and will also be included in the results of the votes together with the votes cast here today. We would use the addition process. This means that the Yes votes and the No votes will be counted. In the light of the voting process determined for today, we will have the following process for agenda items 1 to 11. The drafted as published in the Federal Gazette 25th April 2024 in [indiscernible] of the convocation of today's AGM will be relevant. The resolution adopted regarding agenda Item one includes the establishment of the annual financial statements. So we propose to you that the financial statements and consolidated financial statements for financial year 2023 be approved. Regarding agenda item 2. We propose to appropriate the amount of EUR 1,563,606,146.86 (sic) and use this amount to distribute for the payment of a dividend and to carry forward the remaining amount of EUR 343,606,146.86 to new account. And the agenda item 3, we are asking you for your support for ratification of the acts of management of the General Partner of financial year 2023. So the General Partner and the Supervisory Board proposed that the acts of management of the General Partner be ratified. Here, the persons affected, that is General Partner itself, the managing directors and the shareholders of the General Partner must not exercise their voting right from their own shares nor from third-party shares. And third parties must not exercise the voting right from shares either, which are owned by the General Partners the managing directors or shareholders of the General Partner. And the persons affected have made sure and then run-up to the AGM that these prohibitions are complied with. Regarding the proposal by management, we have a counter proposal from the [indiscernible] under which it is moved that the General Partner not be ratified [ NIMs ] of the acts of management for financial year 2023. If you want to follow the counter proposed you have to vote No. Under agenda item 4, there will be a resolution regarding the ratification of the acts of management of the members of the Supervisory Board for 2023. Here the General Partner and the Supervisory Board suggests that you should ratify the ex-members of the Supervisory [Audio Gap] shares either which are owned by Supervisory Board members. And the General Partner, managing directors and shareholders of the General Partner must not exercise their voting rights from their own or from third-party shares either, and third parties must not exercise the voting right from shares which are owned by the General Partner, the managing directors or the shareholder of the General Partner. The persons affected have made sure in the run-up to the AGM that these prohibitions are all fully complied with. In the [indiscernible] of agenda Item 5, the Supervisory Boards supported by the recommendation of the Audit and Risk Committee, proposes at under 5.1 KPMG Aktiengesellschaft Wirtschaftsprufungsgesellschaft, Berlin be appointed as the auditor of the annual financial statement and as the auditor of the consolidated financial statements for financial year 2024 and also be appointed to perform the limited review of the condensed financial statements and the interim management report as of June 30, 2024. So that is the proposal that KPMG be elected under 5.2. It is proposed that KPMG Aktiengesellschaft Wirtschaftsprufungsgesellschaft Berlin be appointed as auditor for the purpose of confirming the sustainability reporting for financial year 2024, was effect from the entry into force of the law implementing the Corporate Sustainability Reporting directive into German law for 2024. So the Supervisory Board will only carry out this resolution if under the CSRD Implementation Act, it is required that the sustainability reporting to be produced for financial year 2024 be confirmed externally by an auditor, should be appointed by the AGM. And if the CSRD Implementation Act does not provide for any regulation for financial year 2024, that the appointment of the audit of the sustainability reporting by the AGM without any judicial procedure which would be dispensable. On the agenda. So the -- for the votes on 5.1 and 5.2, the General Managing Directors and shareholders of the General Partner must not exercise their voting rights from their own shares nor from third-party shares and third parties must not exercise voting rights from shares that are owned by the General Partner, Managing Directors or the shareholders and General Partner [indiscernible] all made sure that these bands are complied with. Under agenda Item 6, the General Partner and the Supervisory Board proposed. The compensation report financial year 2023 prepared in accordance with Section 162 in conjunction with Section 278 (3) of the German Stock Corporation Act and audited accordingly be approved. Under agenda Item 7 the Supervisory Boards with the recommendation of the shareholder representatives of the Nomination Committee proposed that Oliver Behrens be elected to the Supervisory Board until the close of the AGM, which resolves about ratification of the export financial year 2026 as shareholder representative. In this board, the General Partner, the managing directors and the shareholders of the General Partner must not exercise the voting rights from their own shares nor from third-party shares and third parties must not exercise the voting rights from shares that are owned by the General Partner, the managing directors or the shareholders of the General Partner. And here, too, the presence have made sure that all of these bands are complied with. And agenda Item 8, the General Partner and the Supervisory Board proposed that the authorized capital pursuant to section 4(4) of the Articles of Association [Audio Gap] Section 186(3) sentence 4 of the German Stock Corporation Act and the corresponding amendments to the articles of association be made. Under agenda item 9, the General Partner and the Supervisory Board proposed the authorized capital pursuant to Section 4(5) of the Articles of Association be canceled and that new authorized capital be created for capital increases in cash and corresponding amendments to the Articles of Association being made. Under Agenda Item 10. The General Partner and the Supervisory Board propose that the existing authorization be canceled and new authorization be created to issue participatory notes and other hybrid debt securities that fulfill the regulatory requirements to qualify as AT1 capital. Under Agenda Item 11, the General Partner and the Supervisory Board propose a number of amendments to sections in the Article of Association. On the one hand, they propose that 2 members be delegated by the shareholders' meeting of the General Department. And 3 members be delegated to the shareholders' representatives on the Supervisory Board in accordance Section 15(1) of the Articles of Association. So they currently can #2 representatives delegated by the shareholder representatives be increased to 3. And the other amendment proposed relates to the German Act on the financing of future-proof investments to Zukunftsfinanzierungsgesetz ZuFinG in Section 123(4) of the German Stock Corporation Act the German legislator has aligned German legislation with European law. So that the new Stock Corporation Act now defines the record date as close of business on the 22nd day instead of beginning of the 21st day before the AGM and this requires an amendment to Section 22(2) of our Articles of Association, so much of the agenda. I'd now like to ask the company's proxy to carry out the voting process.

For the sake of good order let me once again announce the current attendance. The share capital of the company amounting to EUR 200 million is divided into EUR 200 million non-par value shares of these 178,648,650 non-par value shares, representing the same number of votes are present at today's AGM. This corresponds to 89.33% of the share capital. In addition, absentee votes for [ 181,442 ] non-par value shares were received. All in all, this results in [ 178,830,411 ] non-par value shares, which is equivalent to 89.42% of the share capital. The updated attendance register will shortly also be available for you on the shareholder portal. And let me once again finally remind you that the possibility to change the voting behavior for absentee votes ends with closing the voting process. I'm now waiting for the signal from the voting proxy. I just got it in order to continue. [Voting]

So the voting proxy of the company has now indicated to me that the votes was carried out on all items of the agenda in accordance with the instructions given. And I hereby now close the voting process. At this point, let me also once again point out the shareholders who have joined us electronically and/or their proxies have the possibility to file or object against resolutions taken the AGM by way of electronic communications. Respective statements can be transferred via the shareholder portal using the objection button. The [indiscernible] taking the minutes will immediately receive a debt objection via the shareholder portal. Objections can only be filed until I'm closing the AGM. Now as the transmission on the Internet has certain time delays, I will once again announce the imminent closing of the AGM. As soon as I have read out the voting results, any objections that we have received after the AGM has been closed cannot be considered. Now it's going to take a couple of minutes until we have counted all of the votes and therefore we will take another short break about 15 minutes, I guess, and then I will announce the results of the votes. [Break]

Ladies and gentlemen. Let me now once again announce the attendance at the point of voting. The share capital of the company amounting to EUR 200 million is divided into EUR 200 million non-par value shares of these 178,648,870 non-par-value shares, representing the same number of votes are present at today's AGM. And this corresponds to 89.33% of the share capital. In addition, absentee votes were received for 181,541 non-par value shares. And all in all, this results in 178,830,411 non-par value shares, which is equivalent to 89.42% of the share capital. Ladies and gentlemen, I have now also received the results of the votes. And let me, therefore, now announce these results. Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. [ Kobler ] has demanded the full details of the results are read out. This is a legal right, which we can demand. Therefore, I would like to ask you for some patience until I have read out all of the entire list of long numbers. And for better readability, the results will also be shown on the screen. And in that time, you can only hear me, but not see me. So I turn to the announcement of the voting results on Item 1. I hereby declare total votes cast were 178,798,710 shares, which is equivalent to 89.40% of the share capital. Yes, votes casts are 178,795,376, which is equivalent to 99.99%. No votes cast 3,334, which is 0.01%. On Item #1 of the agenda, approval of the annual financial statements of DWS Group GmbH & Co. KGaA for fiscal year 2023, the AGM has approved the proposed resolution of the General Partner and the Supervisory Board as published in the Federal Gazette on the 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes. Now according to Section 286(1) of the Stock Corporation Act, this approval requires also the approval of the General Partner. And looking to my left and to my right, I can see that the representatives of the General Partner have granted this approval as well. This brings me to the results for item 2 of the agenda. Total ballot votes cast were 178,388,244 which is corresponding to 89.19% of the share capital. Yes votes 178,125,770 which is 99.85%. No votes cast were 262,474 which is 0.15%. On Item #2, appropriation of the distributable profit of 2023 the AGM has adopted the proposed resolution of the General Partner and the Supervisory Board as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes. Results for the vote on item #3, I hereby declare the total number of valid votes cast was 19,112,579 which corresponds to 9.56% of the share capital. Yes votes 18,363,204 which is equivalent to 96.08%, no votes 749,375 which is 3.92%. On item #2, ratification of the Acts of Management of the General Partner for fiscal year 2023, the AGM has adopted a proposed resolution of the General Partner and the Supervisory Board as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes. And this also means that the countermotion has thus become obsolete. On Item #4 and the results of the votes, I declare total valid votes cast for 19,112,083 shares which corresponds to 9.56% of the share capital. The yes votes 18,295,873 which is equivalent to 95.73% and 816,210 no votes which is 4.27%. On Item #2, that is ratification of the Acts of Management of the Supervisory Board for fiscal year 2023. The AGM has adopted the proposed resolution of the General Partner and the Supervisory Board as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with necessary majority of votes. This brings me to the results of the vote on Item 5.1 of the agenda, I hereby declare valid votes were cast for 19,148,803 shares which corresponds to 9.57% of the share capital. Yes votes, 19,121,454 yes votes which is equivalent to 99.86%, and 27,349 no votes which is equivalent to 0.14%. On item number 5.1 election of the auditor for the annual financial statements and the consolidated financial statements and any interim financial statements, the AGM has adopted the proposed resolution of the Supervisory Board as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes. On the vote on Item 5.2 of the agenda, I hereby declare valid votes were cast for 19,143,865 shares which corresponds to 9.57% of the share capital. Yes votes cast 19,103,949 which is equivalent to 99.79%. No votes 39,916 which is 0.21%. On item 5.2, election of the auditor of the sustainability report, the AGM has adopted the proposed resolution as the Supervisory Board as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes. Let me turn to the results of the vote on Item #6. I declare valid votes were cast for 178,015,861 shares, which is equivalent to 89.01% of the share capital. Yes votes 175,353,228 which is equivalent to 98.50% and no votes 2,662,633 which is 1.50%. On Item #6, approval of the compensation report, the AGM has adopted a proposed resolution of the General Partner and Supervisory Board as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes. Now the result of the vote on Item #7 of the agenda. I hereby declare valid votes were cast for 19,840,048 shares which is equivalent to 9.92% of the share capital. Yes votes 19,779,103 which is equivalent to 99.69% and no votes 60,945, which is 0.31%. On Item #7 of the agenda. Election of Oliver Behrens to the Supervisory Board the AGM has adopted a proposed resolution of the Supervisory Board as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes. Ladies and gentlemen, I have completed reading out the results, which means in about 2 minutes, I will immediately close the AGM. The result of the vote on Item #8 of the agenda, I hereby declare valid votes were cast for 178,803,985 shares which is equivalent to 89.40% of the share capital. Yes votes 178,610,328 which is 99.89% and 193,657 no votes which is 0.11%. On Item #8 of the agenda cancellation of the existing approved capital 2021/I and creation of a new approved authorized capital of 2024/I the AGM has adopted the proposed resolution as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes and capital. Now this resolution requires the approval of the General Partner, which according to Section 284(2) and (3) of the Stock Corporation Act has already recorded by the notary public prior to the AGM and which was handed over to me just a second ago in which notary public just did again. The results of the vote on Item #9 of the agenda. I hereby declare valid votes were cast for 178,805,784 shares which is equivalent to 89.40% of the share capital. Yes votes 177,577,352 which is 99.31% and 1,228,432 (sic) votes which is 0.69%. On Item #9 of the agenda, cancellation of the existing authorized capital 2022/II and creation of a new authorized capital 2024/II, the AGM has adopted the proposed resolution as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes and capital. This resolution also requires the approval of the General Partner, which according to Section 285(2) and (3) of the Stock Corporation Act has already been recorded by the notary public prior to the AGM and which is also part of the notarial deed which was just handed over to me. The result of the vote on Item #10 of the agenda. I hereby declare valid votes were cast for 178,118,391 shares, which is equivalent to 89.06% of the share capital. Yes votes cast 177,406,318 which is 99.60%. And no votes cast 712,073 which is 0.40%. On Item #10 of the agenda, cancellation of the existing and creation of a new authorization to issue AT1 equity instruments, the AGM has adopted a proposed resolution as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes and capital. And here, once again, this resolution requires the approval of the General Partner, which according to Section 285(2) and (3) of the Stock Corporation has already been recorded by the notary public prior to the AGM and which is also part of the notarial deed, which just has been handed over to me. The result of the vote on Item #11 of the agenda, I hereby declare valid votes were cast 178,818,421 shares, which is equivalent to 89.41% of the share capital. Yes votes cast 178,811,145 which is equivalent to 99.99%, and no votes cast 7,276 which is equivalent to 0.01%. On item #11 of the agenda amendment of Section 15(1) that is composition of the joint committee and 22(2) of the Articles of Association record date, the AGM has adopted a proposed resolution as published in the Federal Gazette on 25th of April 2024 with the necessary majority of votes and capital. And this resolution also requires the approval of the General Partner, which according to the section 285(2) and (3) of the Stock Corporation Act has already been recorded by the notary public prior to the AGM and which is also part of the notarial deed, which has just been handed over to me. Ladies and gentlemen, so much for the voting results. I thank you very much for the interest that you have shown in DWS and our virtual AGM of today. I also, once again, would like to thank Stefan Hoops for answering the questions. And of course, I also would like to thank all of the employees who were involved in preparing and running this AGM. I hereby close the meeting. We're looking forward to the DWS AGM of the year 2025, which will again take place in the month of June. Until then, I wish you all the best. Thank you very much, and bye-bye of [indiscernible] .