Randstad N.V. (RAND) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. My name is Wout Dekker, Chairman of the Supervisory Board. And I'm pleased to open this general meeting of shareholders, and I'd like to welcome all of you. I would also like to welcome those of you who are following the meeting online or via the conference call. Today, we have here the full Executive Board. From left to right in front of you here, Rene Steenvoorden, Karen Fichuk, Rebecca Henderson, Chris Heutink, our CFO, Henry Schirmer, Alexander van't Noordende; and our CEO, Jacques van den Broek; and the full Supervisory Board next to me. Chairman of the Audit Committee, Frank Dorjee; Chairman of the Remuneration Committee, Annet Aris; Rudy Provoost; Barbara Borra; and Helene Auriol Potier. Bas Savert is also with us here today. He is representing Deloitte auditors. And for agenda item 2c, adoption of the financial statements of 2021, under that item, he can also answer questions about the financial statement and the auditor's report. And he will also give a brief presentation on the annual audit process and the auditor's opinion. Secretary of the company is also here with us today, Jelle Miedema. And I will appoint him as Secretary to the meeting, and he will, first of all, explain a number of procedural issues. Jelle?

Thank you, Wout. Good afternoon. You can follow this meeting in Dutch and in English. Also we have simultaneous interpretation provided by conference interpreters here today. Presentation that you see here in the room and online is in English. This meeting was convened on 15 February, and all the documents of the meeting were posted on our corporate website on that date. Shareholders can also attend the meeting virtually via the Internet side www.abnamro.com/evoting. And they can also cast their votes and to raise questions in the chat function, and they received a log-in for that purpose after registering. And they can also ask live questions during the meeting via the conference call. The dial-in details have been stated on aforementioned ABN AMRO website. Shareholders who go into the conference call must keep in mind that there's about a delay of about 30 seconds with the webcast via the website. And given this short delay, shareholders who dial-in with their -- into the conference call with their mobile phones should switch off their audio on the computers or their laptops. Shareholders have also been given the opportunity to give voting instructions in advance either through aforementioned website, ABN AMRO website or IQ-EQ Financial Services. Shareholders were able to ask questions prior to the meeting. And [ Median ] and VBDO the Association of Stockholders availed themselves of this opportunity. These questions and the answers have been posted on our website, and this happened last Friday. Furthermore, a number of questions will be briefly explained by Jacques van der Broek and Henry Schirmer. Today, we will not be voting after each agenda item, but the Chairman of the meeting has decided that the vote on all agenda items will be open throughout the meeting and will be closed after agenda item 9. We will then briefly before closing the meeting, we will be announcing the results of the voting -- of the vote. The precise text of the proposals to be voted on today is set out in the agenda and explanatory statement. For the minutes, the meeting will be recorded, and the draft minutes of the meeting will be available within 3 months and will be posted on our website. And then after another 3 months, in which you have the opportunity to respond to the draft minutes, those minutes will ultimately be adopted by the Chairman and myself as Corporate Secretary. Wout, you have the floor.

Thank you, Jelle. Before we proceed with today's agenda, we just had 2 COVID years behind us. And there was a -- we had virtual meetings. We were one of the first meetings, I think it was in 2020, that had to decide to postpone the AGM. Last year, we had a virtual meeting, and I'm very pleased that we have a hybrid form of meeting with about 50 persons present here today. We very much appreciate the turnout. And talking about a special meeting. It is obviously a special meeting because after this COVID period, we thought that we would be able to go back to the new normal, but who would have thought that we would suddenly be faced with war in Europe. Obviously, that requires everybody's attention. It is a human tragedy. That on the one hand. On the other hand, it's going to be an extraordinary meeting because after 34 years, dear Jacques, you have decided to leave the company. So these are your last hours with the company. Next to you is Sander. And at the extraordinary meeting, Sander introduced himself, and you see him here live. And he's very keen to take over the baton from Jacques. But that will only be after the presentation and after the closing of the meeting. So today is an extraordinary meeting for us. Having said that, we can now proceed to item 2 of the agenda, which is the report in 2021. Under this item of the agenda, we will be discussing under 2a, the report of the Executive Board and the report of the Supervisory Board for the financial year 2021; 2b, we'll be discussing a remuneration report also for 2021; and the 2c, we'll be discussing the proposal to adopt the financial statements 2021; and then 2d, will be discussing the explanation of the policy on reserves and dividends; 2e, the ordinary dividend for the financial year 2021; and we'll be closing agenda item 2 with 2f, the special dividend for the financial year 2021. So first, I'll be happy to give the floor to Jacques van den Broek, who will be giving a presentation on the general course of events in 2021. And after him, Henry Schirmer who will be giving a presentation on the financial course of events and other points that I mentioned. Jacques, you have the floor.

Thank you, Wout. Well, this is hybrid yellow. Ordinarily, I wonder around dynamically. Because this is my last opportunity, I'm a bit less dynamic. I'm seated at the table that's because we're doing a live stream. It's not because of me. Okay. Here we go. You know this one. We've featured it for a while, but during COVID, it became more relevant than ever. Our purpose is to support people and organizations in realizing their true potential. And of course, in '20 and '21, as we saw, people could no longer take working for granted. They could no longer take for granted where they worked or when they would return to the workplace. And we have a role to play there. If we look at everybody who worked in relation to COVID testing, vaccinating and tracing, these -- there were a lot of people who were not trained for this. And we made this possible in many countries. We're proud of that. And what we've seen on some interviews recently is we see that the labor market is increasingly mismatched. People in white color and clerical jobs are no longer certain that they'll work until retirement at that job, let alone for the same employer. And then in technology, technical matters, education, everything relating to e-commerce, we have a lot to do there. So moving forward, we help people move forward by getting in touch with us. And ultimately, as Sander is going to bring about, so it's easy for me to talk, by 2030, we'll be helping 500 million people in their working lives. And we think that's a wonderful goal to pursue. Okay. This is my last year, but I'm going to make sure that this year is better than ever. And sure enough, it is. Now our resolutions in April 2020, we saw that 150,000 people would be off the books within a few weeks that were collapsed. But very quickly, as we saw because we're data-driven and supported, there was -- we saw the demand in countries and sectors. So basically, in August and September, we saw that things were picking up again. So then as a team, we got together, and we did what Fritz did in the 1980s. In the early '80s, many of you experienced that period. That was an economic recession with 10% unemployment in the Netherlands. Those were difficult days. Fritz did not make people redundant or close any branches. Back then, we had [ start ] as the USG, the same size as [indiscernible]. But in the second half of the 1980s, because Fritz had retained the infrastructure, he grew really quickly, and he never lost that leading edge in the Netherlands. And we did likewise. So we set up an internal program that we named 24/7, so that within 1 year, we could recover the lost revenue from 2020. And just to give you an example, it previous -- in the previous recession, it took us 5 or 6 years to recover. But we needed to outperform the market because market expectations wouldn't just let us achieve that EUR 24 billion. So we call that 24/7 outperformance. So with respect to the second and third in the market, we have a huge lead. We're pleased to share our market-leading growth with you. And over the course of the year, we noticed that the outperformance increased with respect to our competitors. We hired over 7,000 people in 2021, mainly job placement officers all over the world. We're very happy about that. At the same time, our employee satisfaction is very high. We measure this online. And during COVID, we added some specific questions because, yes, often people were working from home, and some people liked it better than others. Especially our women staff members who had busy families were under huge pressure to keep that going, running their household and working at the same time. But we couldn't manage without our people. Okay, 20% growth. Robert Jan, we never saw that together, did we? That's what happens at this age. You walk down memory lane. I thought Robert Jan, let's do that together, but no, we worked well for many years. Okay. An excellent EBITA. We intended -- well, we invested a lot faster. Ordinarily, job placement officers achieve a certain productivity, but we accelerated that. So we knew that the percentage of revenue would be somewhat lower than in 2019, but we approached it. And in Q4, we even exceeded that, so that wasn't bad at all. Now nearly all growth was organic. That gives us a very strong increasing return on invested capital because we know that investors appreciate that. So organic investments are paying off. And perm and RPO, that's perm 1 to 1 client gives us a fee to make somebody available immediately; RPO, the same but for huge companies. Rebecca is mainly in charge of that. These companies are often operating globally, and we cover a lot of the recruitment. We might cover the entire process until hiring. It could also be just first and second interviews, and we're the global market leader and that Rebecca's expertise is in that field. She didn't invent it, but this is what Rebecca brought on board when we acquired SFN in 2011. And she continues. She's going very quickly. We purchased Cella. They do IT outsourcing, especially creative IT in the U.S. It has a revenue of about 100 million, is growing very quickly. And then there's Hudson Benelux. That company is mainly in Belgium. It started in recruitment and selection, but now it has a very broad spectrum of human resource services. That means that our Belgian company, we have 1,300 people involved in deployment, in secondment. And we have 900 in all kinds of other HR services. So in Belgium, we can offer customers everything in terms of inflow and outflow of staff. And that's the firm's ambition, and I'm very happy with that. We're growing everywhere, as you can see. In 2020 Q2, Europe was in the doldrums. That was at the bottom of the chart. In Q2, Europe was doing somewhat better. But you do see huge growth, far higher and far more revenue than we lost. So we're very happy with that. And it's everywhere. That's very important. And I guess we can stop here, right? We've achieved it. We're the blue line. Look at the colors where that blue line, and you can see 16% growth with respect to -- 6% by manpower. That's the yellow line. And then the red one, that was a [ decode ]. All of a sudden, I remembered it was a decode. They're actually too late, and that compromises their ability because when we started hiring people, they were still available because if you want 7,000 now it's they're difficult to find. That's good news. And then you see the perm revenue is up 50%. We weren't lagging behind previously, but as a percentage of revenue, so considering our gross profit, those burn fees are at a record high. And that's important for the spread of the company and for profitability. As for in-house revenue, that's the same year-on-year. It keeps growing 20% this year. In RPO, Recruitment Process Outsourcing, was 78%. So the middle 2 bars are increasingly important. We get more and more revenue from the top 3 positions. It's important to be dominant and market leader, gets you in the door faster, and candidates know how to find you. So that's a great development. And this is the same chart that I just showed you but in greater detail. Okay. Italy, is a true growth market for us and remains that. In Italy, the penetration of temporary staffing is a bit lower in Europe, it's about 2% or 2.5%, around 2.4%, 2.5%. Italy was lower but is now approaching 2%, but this is still impressive. Italy now exceeds Belgium and Germany. And it is -- our chief there is now focused on catching up with the Netherlands. You can see that most countries excel and have double-digit growth. They're nicely distributed in both sectors and countries. And here's our strategy, on a single sheet of paper. I care about that, building on our strong foundation, building on our values. I said something about that to the Dutch Financial Daily. I'm very proud that the values that Fritz formulated, knowing, serving, trusting, that we've retained those. And we still aim for perfection. And the tide is with us because we have a lot of young job placement officers, and they want to work for a company that makes a difference. In good Dutch, they call that a purpose. And we're proud that we're able to cherish our people that way. In our portfolio, we invest increasingly in sectors that have good growth potential and are profitable because if we're talking about the recruitment process outsourced, that has above average growth. IT outsourcing, Cella is very attractive for us. Especially Sander's background in Accenture, is closely related to IT transformation, IT outsourcing for customers. Sander and I have known each other for years, and we've often compared customers that helps us work together better. And you need to consider that back end better. As for tech and touch, more than ever before, and COVID made that very clear, more than ever, people are looking for somebody to tell them where they should work, what the future holds in store for them on the job market. People find that challenging and basically duck away from that recently. We conducted a survey and asked people who's responsible for your career. 75% says the government or my employer; and 25% response, I'm responsible. And we want to get that up to 100%, it starts with you -- yourself. And of course, you need a good employer. You need a good public-private safety network if things go awry, but it all starts with you. And ultimately, we want to be able to support 500 million people in their working lives. And we're trying to devise an auditable system because what is supporting them, does it mean that they just looked at our website once? No. 188 million people did that last year. No, it's about doing a test online. And we think that having a chat with our chat bots means we're supporting them, touching them. So you'll see more about that in the years ahead. Now sustainability. We're very proud that for the seventh year in a row, we've been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index as the only ones in our sector. It seems to be increasingly important to our customers just as Fritz formulated in the early 1980s. It's more important than ever. Now we call it sustainability, but Fritz called it being a useful member of society. And here, you see some of our nonfinancial performance targets for the short-term incentive 2022 and for the long-term incentive 2022 to 2024. Digital transformation is never finished, and we've advanced because last year, our capital markets featured a road to net 0. And employee engagement, as I mentioned, 80% participation and outperforming the benchmark. And those are basically service-oriented firms that operate on the market. Now our talent, candidate satisfaction and further capability building, so that's our core concept. In-house staffing and professionals are going to be improved even better tomorrow thanks to technology and is quantifiable. The Supervisory Board does that, and that's part of our incentives. Now we received some specific questions, as Jelle indicated, working conditions in the value chain. We're always very concerned about how our staffing should work. That would, for example, safely back to work in the middle of COVID in 26 markets in all sectors where people work. All protocols for safe work were updated. First, we did that together with Adecco and Manpower. But soon afterwards, we did it with our World Employment Confederation worldwide, and we were very proud that we were able to make that happen in a few weeks. And that reveals how much we value those things, human rights policy, misconduct reporting. Of course, we're very transparent about that, and people can read what happened there and how we dealt with it. Measure -- impact measurement of our ultimate goal, we want to report that very quickly. And last time, we received some external assurance about our nonfinancial information. Bis, did you want to say something about that? Something. Okay. That's a good auditor. You can always count on a good auditor. ED&I, equity, diversity and inclusion, we ran some business programs in which, as a company, we should know the score there. We tried to record it to -- and what you can track varies depending on the country. But we have a Global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council. Rebecca serves on that. So if you have any questions, I'll refer you to her later on. And on our in-touch survey, about employee satisfaction, as I mentioned. We increasingly formulated new ED&I questions for our staff. Now the road to net zero, that's our commitment, net 0 by 2050. Well, I'm a very strong and dynamic 90-year-old, so I'll certainly be among them. You're quite a bit younger, a bit younger. Okay. It's not really my call. There is an underlying system. And if you'd like to know more, of course, we'll be happy to tell you, but it's all in our annual report. So you can read there how we're going to handle it, and then we'll see how that electric car drove off. Financial results, Henry?

[Interpreted] Thank you. I'll be giving my presentation in English, and I will try to speak more slowly than I ordinarily do so that the interpreter can keep up. It was absolutely a very strong year. Excellent market-leading growth, Jacques is talking about it. And profitability, that's, of course, very, very important. And our decision to invest in back for growth very early in the COVID period was at all times supported by very, very strong gross margins. That, in a way, gave us the firepower and the confidence to also kind of do really quite an aggressive hiring at that time. It felt quite aggressive, but it was week-by-week kind of organized, and we looked at data and support it. As you can see in the chart, we've generated EUR 1.095 billion EBITA, 4.4% EBITA margin, which was quite a dramatic increase and improvement, which you also needed after the COVID year in 2020, where we had 3.3%. And then of course, it worked its way through to adjusted net income, EUR 806 million, a 71% increase over 2020, a very, very good and strong result. And the EUR 806 million, I will come back later is always a very, very important number when it comes to the calculation of our dividend. Here on that chart, you see a little more detail our gross margin development. You see the improvement of 60 basis points from 19.2% to 19.8%. And in fact, it's mainly driven by our permanent placement. So we've placed 276,000 people into permanent jobs, very, very strong growth of 50%. That comes with very, very strong gross margins. But even besides that, to see our temporary gross margin, also the HR services margin going up, is a strong sign that we also benefited from good, stable pricing in the market, which is, of course, important. And if you would work here, you would probably hear me at least once a month saying gross margin is the engine room of the P&L. And if those numbers are working well, then actually it's quite easy to get the rest together.

I also heard you say in '20 and '21, invest like hell. And everybody is still here? In the company?

Yes, that's true. I was shocked about it myself. But it was purposeful. We felt we had to give an impetus to the company at that time, and it worked. It was good. But you also, of course, see a -- on a very serious note. We've had quite a dramatic increase in operational expenses. You see here from EUR 3.278 billion to EUR 3.778 billion, EUR 540 million, which is mainly really an investment into people, hiring people. We've added more than 7,000 people to our own as new colleagues. And within that is also a further investment into digitalization of the company, where we've also been very, very vocal quarter-by-quarter. That is an investment we never cut corners because it's really securing that also the future years are looking good. Full year incremental conversion ratio of 44% is something we've seen as an output, but we also wanted to be between 40% and 50% despite very heavy investments because we just wanted to balance growth with profitability and cash and company. That brings me naturally to the free cash flow generation, EUR 590 million in 2021, where we had -- of course, we are countercyclical business. So when we have strong growth, we're investing into receivables mainly. So therefore, you've seen actually in a quite stressed year in 2020, we had more than EUR 1 billion, EUR 1.1 billion of cash flow. Actually, I think that is still an undervalued feature of our business, where we have a counterbalance in there when things are really going well. We're investing cash. And when it's not so well, we're releasing cash out of the balance sheet, and that you see that in the number. We really thrown the kitchen sink at our days sales outstanding, so managing outstanding payments because we wanted also to finance that growth by managing the recipe overdues, and we've been successful, working that down by 1.3 days in 2020. And then, yes, on the right side, something we are proud about. It doesn't mean we can do better with the return on invested capital of 16.8% is really a testament to the fact that organic growth normally gives you the best possible return of your investment. We ended the year with a net cash position of EUR 179 million, excluding IFRS 16, excluding our lease liabilities with the leverage ratio, also ex IFRS 16 of minus 0.1%, so nearly no leverage in the company. And that brings me naturally to my dividend proposal. You've seen it all. It is proposed to pay a total dividend of EUR 5 per share, consisting of an ordinary dividend of EUR 2.19 per share, which represents a 50% payout of adjusted net income, EUR 806 million I showed you before and a special dividend of EUR 2.81 per share on top of it. The dividend on the preference B and C shares is EUR 8.2 million in total. And with that, let me go back to Wout. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you. Thank you to Jacques and Henry. After this detailed presentation, I'd like to start the discussion of 2a, the report of the Executive Board and report of the Supervisory Board for the financial year 2021. And this concerns Pages 21 through 121 at the annual report. Questions on remuneration will be dealt with under agenda item 2b. Who can I give the floor? Just a minute, we need to wait for the microphone. And as always, please state your name and who you represent.

[Interpreted] Yes, my name is David, sir. I'm the Foundation Legal Protection of Investors. I'd like to complement the Executive Board with the performance of this past year. Now my questions are mainly about being able to hire enough people for all the positions that we have available. And I'd like to start with the older employees. 40, 50 years ago, anyone who is around 50 was given all sorts of odd jobs to do. And now we have this older generation that has never really been as healthy as they are now. So I would like to ask to make sure that elderly workers also have meaningful work and to tweak the company a bit perhaps because companies simply -- businesses have not been adjusting to this older generation that is so fit. Well, something else that I keep hearing is that older people consider to be meaningful to continue to work. I mean they understand that it's important that you remain flexible, you feel younger, and there's quite a demand for older people. Truck drivers, for instance, I think that we need about 7,000 in the Netherlands here, so there's an increasing demand for elderly truck drivers over 70. And so yes, you operate globally, but there are shortages. And so you'll have to deal with cultural change -- cultural differences, sorry, and language differences. I've seen that myself language issues if people don't speak English or Dutch. Also, some dangerous situations can come about. So how will you deal with that? And I'm referring to transport, logistics and the building industry.

Mr. Stevens, a couple of these questions are questions that you raised 3 years ago. You are quite consistent here. But we also agree that you would ask a maximum of 3 questions in 1 block. So I'd like to ask the Executive Board to answer these questions, and then we shall give the other people also the opportunity to raise questions. You can always come back. Jacques, do you remember what you said 3 years ago?

[Interpreted] Yes, of course. Well, it is a topical issue for me, myself. I'm 61. I'm going to turn 62 shortly. I agree with you. About 4 years ago, I was walking around with John DeWolfe. You may be familiar with him. He is an ambassador, an elderly employee. And we are walking around in the Hague just to show that people around 50, 60 are quite fit. And it's difficult because all our clients really want a young employee, fits the fittest, youngest employee and preferably want to take them over from their competitors. But we've seen this coming, this scarcity. And I've been saying for a couple of months now that this traditional way of finding people simply doesn't work anymore. I mean we advertise, and we call this post and pray. First, we posted advertisement, and then we pray. We have about 200 million people in our database, give or take. And so what we do is our clients ask us to do something, and then we start looking for people. And if you read the newspaper, you read about algorithms and all these negative stories, there's a bit of tampering and things like that. And we really believe in algorithms. If we have a good profile, these algorithms can really help us pick the right person. We can say to the client, okay, we've got an ideal person for you, but he's 58. And we also lobby with the government to make sure that this policy continue to pay employees for another 2 years. If they become ill, that's really bad. So we can always find people. We are building an enormous database, 188 million people that are connected with us. We have a very important strategy here. So I've been telling us, our largest clients for years, this is what your workforce is going to look like, 18 to 70 years. 1/3 is not going to be working for you while you will be hiring them, and then 30%, 35% will be working at home. That's the future. If you really want to find people, you will have to expand your profile. You have to start thinking about training, and you have to do away with certain prejudices. And the same applies to training. We feel that some sectors, health sector, logistics, you mentioned that, education, people are rigidly focusing on certificates, diplomas. So we are engaging with our clients. And of course, if there are shortages in the market, we see this in the numbers, we see more and more elderly workers finding a job. So that's good news. I'm here to support you.

[Interpreted] A question off mic, the interpreter cannot hear the question.

[Interpreted] That's okay. Okay, let's take baby steps here.

[Interpreted] Another comment off mic, the interpreter cannot hear what is being said.

[Interpreted] Cultural changes are of all times, of course, as a company, we are the sector that has multicultural, diverse workforces. Years ago, when I was a subsidiary manager in Rotterdam, I organize specific courses for our clients. So yes, yes, we very much support diversity. But this is our craft, so we're good at it. But here, once again, clients have to adjust. Just recently, I talked to a client and I said, it was very difficult to find people. Let's do this, that and the other. And then some people say, no, but we can't do that because these people don't speak our language. Well, yes, but this was a guy from the South of the Netherlands. If you're not from the South of Netherlands, you won't understand the people from that region. But anyway, we're good at doing this. And your point about diversity, you're quite right.

[Interpreted] My name is Julia of BofA. I'm here on behalf of the Association VBDO. We are representing institutional investors and 600 private investors, and we have EUR 1,600 million in funds. And thank you for paying so much attention to the question that we asked it and devoting such consideration to it. If you don't mind, I've got a follow-up question on 3 of those topics. The first topic is about Randstad's role in society. As you said, purpose is extremely important for employees as well to have a meaningful job. And you stated your goals for the next 3 years. But we live in very challenging times, inequality is worsening. We've got the climate crisis, and the biodiversity is rapidly diminishing. So that's -- for that reason, when we see Randstad's strong financial performance, we wonder whether those goals are adequate and whether they're properly reflected in your strategy, in your strategic ambitions. And we understood that you're trying to tighten that strategy to incorporate Randstad's social ambition still more. And my question is, can you tell us when we'll see more of that? When will topics such as diversity, human rights and, for example, sustainability such as the climate among your customers, when will that be reflected in Randstad's KPIs? That's my first question. Would you like me to ask all questions? Okay. I've got a footnote to question one. As the VBDO, we've offered to brainstorm about the KPIs. So the question is, can you commit to this? And would you like us and other external stakeholders to help you brainstorm about that? That was question one. Now question two, which is about diversity. This is my first time at this meeting, but I understand from my predecessors that last year, you committed to adding new diversity and inclusion targets. And you also committed to reporting about them. I have understood, and I checked the annual report that was recently published. All we saw was the percentage of women in leading positions. So the question is which KPIs will you be measuring at Randstad. And can you give some examples? When can we expect that? Not only Randstad's own staff but especially the temporary staff that have their jobs via Randstad, and we're also curious how you'll be measuring this. Finally, last question, that concerns transparency especially transparency in human rights and in ethical dilemmas. Previously, in our other conversation, we were very happy with the decision by Randstad not to do business with certain countries or certain sectors based on human rights-related and moral considerations. So we were impressed. And at the same time, we were also surprised that we didn't know this. So we'd like to ask whether Randstad is willing to agree to communicate more transparently to our stakeholders about that. For example, by issuing an exclusion list of parties you don't do business with or report where you identify the topics arising from the human rights policy, which dilemmas result from that and which choices has Randstad made as a result?

[Interpreted] Thank you. Those are interesting topics and excellent questions. Jacques, would you like to start out and distribute the questions among people who will be taking them in the future as well as people who will be answering these questions in the future? I think it's excellent that you offer to help us.

[Interpreted] Of course, we'd like to do this together because we're at the hub of society. More generally, though, some things are difficult to establish because you can't do that. So we can't track certain things about our temporary staff in some countries. So if I tell Mr. Steven that we have a very diverse workforce, I can even say that our role is crucial in integrating people from other countries with other backgrounds, who were older, but we're not allowed to record that. We can't keep such records.

[Interpreted] Well, previously I understood that the records aren't the same in each country. For example, in the United States, it's inappropriate to ask about cultural background, so I certainly understand that. But I also checked how other countries are doing this. For example, ABN AMRO has a breakdown by country wherever they can, where it's allowed and appropriate, they do report about that. So perhaps Randstad could follow that example.

[Interpreted] Well, when we provide people, it's different from people working for us. ABN AMRO is based in the Netherlands and not in great many other countries. So with all due respect for the ABN AMRO Bank, it's a slightly different order of magnitude. But I would like to have you on board for this topic. There are some issues, however, concerning -- it's not static, it's all dynamic. Sometimes clients just don't feel right about this. I could list them. Sometimes we have to intervene if we see how people interact with getting people safely back to work in the health and safety process. Of course, we can state our view, but we can't say this is what we do, and this is what we don't do.

[Interpreted] Are you on my third question now? Okay. Yes, I'm just trying to track your answers. So you don't want a set list of what you will and won't report on.

[Interpreted] We can talk about what we'll communicate about more. So if you say we didn't know that you did that, we'll see how we can record that because we do have high standards and values. It all starts there. Rebecca, in general, can you flesh out the D&I Council and talk about what we're currently working on as well the challenges we face?

Yes, thank you for your question. So the Global Diversity Council is set on some ambitions that we can in the future report on. To Jacques' point earlier, country-by-country, our systems aren't unified to gather all the data we'd like to know about our current employees or who we plan to hire in the future. However, we are setting targets and ambition for ourselves to have -- to work towards a more diverse workforce in the future more than the women that we reported last year but people of color and other ethnic background. So I would -- you will expect to see more from that as the Diversity Council comes together and determines what we can report, what's appropriate country by country because, as you know, what diversity means in the U.S. is different in other parts of the world. Now here with my colleague, Karen, today, we are very proud of the strides we have made in the U.S. And we are a bit more advanced in our goals and objectives and what we're able to report there being in one homogeneous marketplace and have that easier. But now we're taking those learnings, and we're broadening them across the rest of the world. We actually have 5 specific pillars that we're working on, and we're getting ready to launch 2 reports. One in the U.S., I encourage you to read it, and I'm sure we can make that available to you. And we're also distributing our global report. So the first tangible results of some of the work that we're doing, and I expect you to see more from us in the future.

And yes, Henry, you take that.

Just thanks, Rebecca. Just adding 1 or 2 things. Speaking from my position as CFO, we see actually in all those points a business opportunity and not a risk, be it the CO2 footprint reduction but also the diversity and inclusion topic is for us a matter of being competitive. So therefore, actually, we have a very natural drive to go forward and always a big fan of listening to each other, so absolutely. Without making any promises, but learning from each other is always a good thing, so looking forward to that. We pledged to be part of the science-based target initiative because we also feel that there is a need for all of you outsiders of the company to kind of to see what you're really doing. And being part of those initiatives with good structure, it's actually helping us to, in a way, talking easy about what we're doing. And it also puts a bit of kind of good pressure on us to really define Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3, also, what are we doing in our network or our supply chains also have a good influence. So all means go ahead.

Very interesting that you're doing it, and I've seen indeed your publication on Scope 1, 2 and 3. And what I found interesting or remarkable is that in Scope 3, you account the emissions from air travel from your workers. But I was wondering if you are also thinking of expanding what you integrate in Scope 3, for example, the emissions of the clients that you help with your workers.

And we've discussed that. We also need to be -- I mean, it's quite a formal project we are going into. And you need to make sure that it's a repeatable model. So if we get from some customers we get the data, from some you don't, it's tricky. So let us do our homework first on the things we have in our control, and then, yes, definitely, we want to be part of the solution.

And I can imagine with the upcoming regulations, whereby all larger companies need to report on our emissions, it will make it easier also for Randstad to be able to report a wider Scope 3, right?

Yes. We just see it as an opportunity. Yes, absolutely.

And maybe finally, I got a question for you. So we are now 7 years in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index. We're the only company that's in there. I've not had 1 year of revenue from clients said, "Oh, I'm going to stop immediately working with my competitors because they are a less sustainable company. So can you please, whenever you are in these meetings, make it very aware that we are the only one.

I'm sorry, Mr. van den Broek, complements to your position in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index doing very well, yes. And we are only here to invite you to make sure that you become first position, right?

Yes. Always, always.

[Interpreted] You can hear that this is an important topic within the company. Thank you for the incentive. Now if we're talking about levels of ambition, I'd like to give Sander the opportunity to share his general view of these topics.

I would say we have a net ambition, but maybe we should start thinking about a net positive ambition not just on the sustainability but also on diversity and inclusion. And you may have read from my background that I'm very passionate about diversity and inclusion. Because I'm with Henry, this is not because we are a charity or we want to be nice people. No, it's a business imperative. Our clients expect us to be diverse. Diverse teams have better ideas. And last but not least, if we want the best people in the company for our company and for our clients, if we only go in one place, we're not going to -- we're never going to find the best. So my commitment is 100% and more on that front. And I was absolutely pleased to see that we are -- as Rebecca said, our report in North America looks fantastic. It has lots of data because in North America, we can do a lot more than in some European countries. But also, our team has worked on the first global report, and you'll be reading it soon, I hope. It's not yet at the level of North America, but we're going to work towards that level as well. So I'm 100% and more committed.

Maybe one follow-up question, if that's...

[Interpreted] No, then Mr. Stevens will think that we're favoring you, and we don't want that. So I'd like to wrap up this topic by mentioning one thing. There -- is it an initiative being kicked off cold inconvenience in the boardroom, and it's funded by the Goldschmeding Foundation, who is fortunately with us, and the initiative is from [indiscernible], where there are 2 groups of executives and Supervisory Board members who will be setting up community practices in the next 2 years to focus on the moral aspect of those dilemmas and to exchange best practices. Next questions?

[Interpreted] I'm Robert Vreeken from We Connect You Public Affairs and Investor Relations. Jacques van den Broek has achieved magnificent results, I'm delighted with them. And he mentions that at Randstad, you're in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index for the seventh year in a row, and my question is what is your ranking. It's very special that we have an old and a new CEO. And one tradition I suddenly see that both of you are left-handed, and that's very special because that's going to bring us many wonderful things in the future. On 24th February, everything relating to corona was covered, and then we wound up in the biggest crisis ever, and that brings on challenges. Mr. Dekker mentioned something recently about Ukraine and Russia, but this is our biggest challenge ever. What's wonderful is that we have a network that has relevant networks everywhere because we need to use Randstad's network to calm things down everywhere. Randstad's network in Europe, Asia, the U.S. and China should be deployed to convince China to get Russia back where they belong, and that's extremely important. You can all contribute to that. Because you know that China, Russia, Brazil and Turkey are not excessively democratic, so perhaps you can help a bit with that. And you mentioned sustainability. What's the story with your own buildings and the buildings of your employees? Your employees, your staff, most of them are middle class, and their utility bill is growing from -- is increasing from EUR 200 to EUR 600, from EUR 200 to EUR 600. Those of you seated at this table can afford that, but your staff has a big problem. Inflation is going to exceed 10%. It's getting out of control. What are you going to do about that? Randstad can help equip, but the homes of staff with solar panels for EUR 5,000 and generators at EUR 5,000 plus a circular shower that cuts the use of water and gas significantly. And that would be a huge contribution. Plus heating the desk chairs cost EUR 0.02 an hour in energy, and you could turn down the thermostat by a few degrees. In 2019, Mr. van den Broek mentioned that he was going to start driving an electric car, and he hasn't done that yet because not a single light year has been delivered, but we have a far more sustainable alternative because those electric cars will run indirectly on gas. It would be better to take that -- take another vehicle because you want to transition to [indiscernible] because it looks cool and it's super sustainable. And one of those [indiscernible] is only EUR 2,000. Finally, we're in Amsterdam, and we've got the zoo here. And it's missing EUR 15 million because of corona. So it would be nice if Jacques van den Broek and Sander van't Noordende help the zoo artists. And that would also encourage sustainability so that people in Amsterdam can go visit the zoo instead of traveling to Safari Park in Africa, that would be very sustainable. What I care about is that Randstad use their network and encourages sustainability by allocating funds toward that cause for their staff.

[Interpreted] Thank you very much, Mr. Vreeken. Finding good people is our core business, and we've drafted a nice profile for Jacques' successor, but that did not list being left handed as a requirement, so I can't take credit for that. Jacques, would you like to respond to the remarks?

[Interpreted] And it's also about which actions are there and what you do with your employees. Now about that war, were you referring to the war or climate issues?

No. There's only one biggest challenge ever...

[ Remark off mic, interpreter apologizes. ]

[Interpreted] Well, you have to pick one. You tell us. In the near future, it would be Russia. And over 300 billion is being claimed from insurance companies. And we haven't really launched the climate issues yet. Okay. Let's start with the war. We're a successful company because we're focused. We do focus on what we can influence. Chris is responsible for Poland, so he sees what's happening there. On the other -- on the one hand, it's very impressive if we're talking about how many people are being accommodated and given shelter. On the other hand, it's a compelling human trauma. We have about 700 Ukrainians who are already working for us in Poland, and we're trying to do our best to take care of them. And broadly in Europe, we're trying to support Ukrainians and find jobs for them. We've already got a few hundred commitments, but this will take time. We won't get it done overnight. From our focus, that's what we can do. Now as for the cost of energy, I spoke with somebody from a large bank of 5 million payments. And it's unfortunate that we're using -- that we're speaking in these terms because it causes panic, and that's unnecessary. People have fairly efficient contracts, so yes, it is becoming more expensive, but it's not spiraling out of control. And we're not going to plan our employees' lives. Okay, for [indiscernible], that's a very Amsterdam product. And that 10% inflation, we shouldn't do that. If we use these things, people will get very worried, and there will be a self-fulfilling prophecy in the recession, so I'm going to take this lightly. Now Ukrainians, especially those from the Donbas, may be a huge solution for labor market shortages in the Netherlands. In Europe, we can't allow the climate change because we don't have the right people for that. That's a very important topic. And Sander will follow up on that. We saw the Euro Commissioner, Mr. Schmit, the green deal does not have a section on labor market. Everybody is talking about money. Money doesn't solve things. Training solves things. That's what we're active in, and that's our contribution.

Thank you very much for this explanation because if I hadn't asked that question, we never would have known that Chris Heutink is very active in Poland. That's magnificent. And we can also tell the government that Randstad will help all those Ukrainians get jobs. I think that would be wonderful. And that I'm saying this is very, very good for Randstad. But another issue is that there's nobody left in the Randstad Metropolitan Belt, so soon only expats will be able to rent or purchase a home in this Randstad Metropolitan Belt in the Netherlands. In the past companies would build housing developments of affordable homes for their employees because the government can't handle it anymore, but companies with -- that are profitable might be able to help with the housing shortage. So let's stick to what we do best. Thank you for all those suggestions. And Randstad is at the hub of society. And yes, we have 40,000 employees. And annually, we give 2 million people the opportunity to work. And there are many opportunities, and we can use our network and influence. It's excellent that you mentioned the word bicycle. When you enter downstairs, you'll see our founding father Frits Goldschmeding, seated on his bicycle. And Jacques, as a farewell gift to everybody, requested a donation for a bicycle plant in Africa. So those bicycle examples, I'm not sure whether the brand you mentioned was the best one, but we're also talking about getting employees bicycles. I think this is excellent, but what matters most is to start with Randstad forest. And the first Randstad forest might result from Jacques van den Broek because a lot of forests need to be planted all over the world to keep the earth cool. Thank you for that suggestion. You have many suggestions now at the rear of the room.

[Interpreted] I'm Kean, I represent the VEB Association of Stockholders. I'm also very excited about Randstad. I'd like to complement Mr. van den Broek and his team for the magnificent results, especially in 2 very challenging years. They're so wonderful in every respect. And some shareholders are now optimistic that you can solve all the world's problems such as inflation and war. But whatever is within your sphere of influence, excellent work, and that offers hope for the future. Now that said, the conclusion should ordinarily be, let's keep going as we have, why should we change a successful formula. If you have a team of diversity, somebody might want to be a court -- might want to provide different feedback. So I'm 1/4 Polish, 1/4 Indonesian, 1/4 Dutch. And perhaps not your core business but adjacent matters, you invest heavily in education and training people who can be place in jobs. How about offering education as a product? The same holds true if you look into certain sectors where service is abysmal. And many of your people work there, too. That's the IT services, desktop management and the like. You could provide people who could do that or even the service itself. And now I may be saying horrible things about Deloitte, another sector that has issues with finding, retaining and training the right people, includes audit services. And you're already involved in many of these duties because you place people in jobs. But perhaps you could consider offering that as Randstad IT services, Randstad Audit Services globally. And you could add other sectors. Is that something that you or your successor might consider as a project? And if it works, well, that's a new gold mine. You may not have solved one of the world problems, but you may have dealt with other issues, and that might be a wonderful opportunity. That was my main question. Perhaps in the second round, I'll ask some questions of a different nature.

[Interpreted] Thank you for the compliments. I've done my best, so was the entire team. Well, this question is ongoing. And for the older viewers amongst -- we used to have a training company as a cleaning company and a security company because, apparently, Frits thought, as you did, if you can supply people, you can also offer a service. But we concluded that it wasn't that difficult, and you very soon become fragmented. And from our perspective, you can be good at one thing, which is making people at all levels available worldwide. We're very proud of being #1, but we have an incredibly large market share of 6.5% for job placement. Our market share in recruitment and hiring is 2%. In IT services, in terms of supplying IT-related services, that market -- that share -- that market is nonexistent. So we're in the comfortable position because we don't have an 80% market share. We're not in a situation where there's no more room for growth. As for education. We don't think that's our future. If you look at education online, there's a huge surplus capacity. You can't excel there. What's important is that none of those education companies says we've trained so many people. They came from there, and now they're going there. All they say is what type of training they have. We say that we train 400,000 people, but we link that. So in the Netherland, there are 10 million employees broadly speaking. What can they do? Whether their ability is not? What are they doing? What's the demand? We link that, and then we devise individual programs to get people from A to B. That's our role in education. It's going to expand considerably. That's part of the EUR 500 million. But once we obtained -- we acquired some call centers in Portugal, and it's a nice business but it's difficult to make it work.

[Interpreted] Okay. That's not surprising perhaps one more attempt. If you see where we do have an issues, not specifically the Netherlands, but it's about the Netherlands, a significant share of the population is difficult to place in the jobs that will be -- where the future demand will be, that's painful and it's also expensive. It's a concern of the government. I would imagine some governments are willing to pay a lot of money to a very experienced institute to make that happen. So to bring those large groups of people closer to the job market, are those things that you may already be working on and profiting from?

[Interpreted] Well, all over the world, we run over 100 projects where we work with young people, the elderly who are not easy to place in jobs. Even regions that we don't actually operate in such as Africa, the problem is not training them. The problem is systemic. Let's take Rotterdam, for example, there are 38,000 people subsisting from benefits in the McDonald's and [indiscernible] looking for people to do unskilled work. If you call social services, they can't provide those people. That's the huge problem. We can help them with that. That's why we're advocating public-private partnerships. In Amsterdam Southeast, there are about 500 people [indiscernible] supported this idea. We've got regional centers that were set up for COVID. The unemployment didn't increase, but we need to scale that. Especially in terms of support, training is not the core issue. You tell people I know who you are, I know where you live. That's not how the labor exchange works. That's what we need to do. But we're not doing that to make a lot of money. At best, this is at cost.

[Interpreted] That's a clear answer. I'll come back later on the second round.

Chairman, who can I give the floor for the first round? You called it the first round? All right. Are there any questions for the second round. Mr. Stevens?

[Interpreted] Mr. Chairman, there's 1 question that you more or less answered. This was my question about algorithms. And then I have another question. So we don't know whether we should address this now or later on when we deal with the financial statements. So this is not being able to find enough temporary workers, how -- in which measure does that put pressure on Randstad's returns? Can you specify with numbers and/or percentages? That was a question I had. Okay. I suggest we proceed to answer that question now. Let me see my EBIT margin. There's a factor, an increase -- fee increase that determines the EBIT margin. Do you think you will be able to hold on to this? And then the causes of the higher operational costs was a one-off or we have -- it's -- this is in the first quarter. Is this a one-off? Or what do you think? I don't know whether to ask this question now or whether you prefer me to ask that question when we talk about the financial statements.

[Interpreted] To answer your questions, first, Jacques and then Henry.

[Interpreted] I'll take the first question. Mr. Stevens, things work the other way around. People's well-being impact our statistics, and we can always find things. Almost all our competitors work according to this premise of post and pray. And they won't be able to find people. What we have is the data. Now this has 2 upsides. We can still find people, and I called this in the newspaper this week, I call it 10 million pats on the shoulder. So we can always reach everybody who's in our database. And based on those data, we can engage with these people in order to explain what we have out there and explain that our client, for instance, has an interest in hiring the 74-year-old man who is interested in logistics. And so that's how we use our data. I would venture to say, if we can't supply, nobody can supply. But the client will have to change his profile, will have to make adjustments. And part of our outperformance is that we've been able to find 7,000 intermediaries. Others haven't been able to find them. And for the RPO business, very difficult profiles, we can still find people, so you can be rather optimistic.

To the point -- to the first one, it's a little bit kind of an older thinking of that we can only work when we place unemployed people into a job. You see where we are making our living with is also getting people from a job to a job. So when you look into the quit rates, it's American statistics, the highest people changing jobs ever measured in that regard. So there's a lot of movement in the labor market. And if we're doing it well, we are actually doing a good job in between and making our margin from it. And talking about margin, in a scenario where we grow further, that is not a forecast nor kind of a promise. But if that were to be the case, we also want to see a positive incremental conversion rate kind of adding to the EBITDA margin we have reported in '21. So that is what we are working for. With regards to the one-offs, if I understand your question correct, we have a very, very disciplined approach in looking, into classifying costs into whether it's indeed a one-off or not. I cannot make any remarks into whether there will be one-offs into the future, but you can absolutely put a lot of trust into our accounting when we classify something as one-off, that it's indeed not a recurring cost. I hope that helps.

[Interpreted] Are there any further questions? Thank you, Henry.

[Interpreted] Yes. My name is Kean, as I said, VEB Association of Stockholders, only 3 questions or clarification. Page 12, you refer to managed services program. I understand that this is to do with the fact that supplies and other chains that you play a role there. I understand that because that would make things so much easier for clients. But what I don't understand is that this would be cost neutral for the client. And you said that Randstad get a percentage of the salaries of these people, they have to pay for these people anyway. I understand that. But I just don't understand that Randstad, well, that this is cost neutral for the client. The second question is easier. How is it that you're still using the brand Tempo-Team? I really fail to understand how Tempo-Team would really stand out from Randstad. I think it's much more convenient to only advertisers around the Randstad. And then finally, a fundamental question. Page 23, this is really a high level issue, the materiality metrics, things that are relevant for the company and society at large, several ethical factors, soft factors, if you will, on the list. And what I'm wondering is that in which measure do these factors determine whether Randstad would refuse to work with certain customers or certain workers.

Directly gets it because she's -- so MSP historic, yes, MSP historically originated in the U.S., very fragmented market. Clients didn't want to talk to 40 suppliers. So many service provider came into play. They have a vendor management tool, a piece of tech which we don't have proprietary. The order is sent in and then sent out to a panel, and they report back in terms of quality, price and speed. This was we couldn't get around that. That is really effect of life in the U.S., but it started as a neutral MSP. And in that sense, it's not a very attractive business model. You get a fee to handle this. You negotiate on behalf of the client with the suppliers. We always wanted to work towards a positive MSP. What does that mean? In more and more businesses, we can now do direct sourcing. That means that before farming it out to suppliers, our MSP team is already recruiting and sending back. Then it becomes interesting, right, because you own the whole, yes, how do you call it, behavior pattern of the client very much inside. And we are, of course, increasingly, we do not do an MSP where we're not a supplier in the panel. So you should take that into account. And a large part of the MSP revenues and profits are in our regular business, so to say. Frit or for Chris, the Tempo-Team?

[Interpreted] Excellent question. Tempo-Team in the Netherlands was introduced by [ Fritz Scotsman ] because the market -- Randstad's market share was very big. In the market, there was still room for a second brand, goes to show because this is a company with a turnover of more than EUR 1 billion. And in the Netherlands, we are indeed in -- operating in different sectors than Randstad. So the positioning of Tempo-Team in the Netherlands, and we've got the positioning of Randstad and also Yacht, we sort of fine-tune that. We tweak that. And so there's an enormous market. And probably, there's a need to have options, high-quality companies in our sector because that is Randstad and certainly also Tempo-Team. But some people have a preference for red over blue. And that applies to the Netherlands but also Belgium. The situation may be slightly different. But ultimately, that is what we are offering in the market so that people have a choice, have options. Perhaps in all those 3 countries, we have extremely successful operations, so why pull the plug.

[Interpreted] So you would not save money?

[Interpreted] Yes, it would cost us revenue, and we wouldn't be better off. You hear from this answer that this question has been asked before and that they are very valid reasons to go ahead. Jacques, the third question. Additionally, we also measure where our applicants are from, and there's less than 10% overlap there, and that's important. And then we lure people into our overall community. I used to work for Tempo-Team when I was a student, so I don't know whether that's a good sign or not, but I'll leave that to you.

[Interpreted] The materiality matrix, a question of [ EBITA ], this is not a static list, we're a pragmatic company. People make choices every day, day in, day out. But it does determine our behavior business ethics. There are clients that deal with people in a certain way, that pay the wages in a certain way or people who have -- or companies that have a very specific preference for certain kinds of employees, and I'm not referring to the 74-year-old human rights. And I must say that in choices that we hardly do blue collar work in China and India, we don't have presence in many countries, only 39 countries. Of course, that is a big part of the world market. All the other countries, there are reasons why we don't operate in those countries and especially not blue collar. So that solves a lot of problems. Occupational health and safety, safety back to work, we are advocates of that. And ultimately, that can lead to severing relationships if it's not in the interest of our people. So it does affect our behavior, and it's part of our internal guidance . If something doesn't feel well, we want our people to come and knock on our door, and we talk to our clients. So yes, it does affect how we operate. So on the one hand, you have clients and you also have people, you want to carry out checks. You don't want the wrong people to go and to start working in our organization. Yes, we do screening, paperwork, et cetera, and checks and balances, of course. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Thank you. So I see that with this item of the agenda, there are no further questions. So with that, we can proceed to 2b, remuneration report for the financial year 2021. You'll find this on Pages 136 to 151. I'd like to give the floor to the Chairman of our Remuneration Committee, Annet Aris to give us a brief presentation.

Elaborate on the activities of the Supervisory Board Remuneration Committee of the last year. As we all heard, 2021 was a very successful year not only financially but also with regard to the progress the company made in its digitalization journey, as well as creating better experiences for clients, talent and employees. The good results were, of course, partly due to good market circumstances. But especially due to the fact that Randstad further strengthened its position as market leader. The incentives for 2021 were set such that -- they are set such that the especially rewarded market outperformance and profitable growth whilst at the same time taking into account the interest of all stakeholders, clients, talents, employees and society. Looking back at the 2021 remuneration, the management achieved a maximum reward for the financial goals of the short-term incentive plan. For the nonfinancial short-term goals, 2/3 of the maximum was achieved, resulting in an overall achievement of 93% of fixed salary out of a maximum of 100%. The long-term incentive plan, which was granted in 2019 and vested in 2021 realized a target achievement of 144% of fixed salary out of a maximum of 218%. This reflects the strong competitive performance of the company's relative total return to shareholders in the last 3 years and an above-target performance on the nonfinancial KPIs. The Executive Board received in full the shares resulting from the matching share plan allocated in 2018 following sustainable performance of the company in the past 3 years. Looking forward at the 2022 remuneration, the SB decided -- the Supervisory Board decided on a base salary increase 4.5%. This is in line with this year's internal group practice for Randstad's top performing employees. Targets in the bonus 2022 and the long-term incentive 2022 for 2024 were derived from the strategic target framework and are focused around the following points: financial performance, market position and solid cash flow. The relative revenue growth, incremental conversion ratio, day sales outstanding and relative shareholder return of key performing [indiscernible]. Our strategy and stakeholder agenda, EG progress in digital transformation, world-class cybersecurity, the road to net-zero emissions, talent and employee satisfaction were reflected in the nonfinancial KPIs. In 2021, the Remuneration Committee has refreshed the benchmark of the Executive and Supervisory Board remuneration levels. In order to bring the remuneration back in line with our policy benchmark, the international labor market peer group, the Supervisory Board proposes to increase the base salary of the new CEO by 15% and to increase the fees for the Supervisory Board Committee membership somewhat as well a slightly increased annual retainer of the Chair of the Supervisory Board. In addition, the Supervisory Board proposes to include a discretionary prorated [indiscernible] treatment for the share matching plan for the Executive Board in the remuneration policy. For the coming year, a further refining of the nonfinancial goals and bringing them even more in line with stakeholder interest and ESG requirements is envisaged. We look forward to continued conversation with you on these topics. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Annet? Are there any questions about this item on the agenda? If not, as we pointed out at the beginning of the meeting, there's an advisory vote to adopt the remuneration report and the voting points for the other items are open throughout the meeting up to agenda item 9. And the exact text of the vote is included in the agenda and the expansion. After discussing Agenda item 9, I'll close the vote, and Jelle Miedema will then announce the results of the vote after any other business. So this brings us to agenda item 2c, proposal to adopt the financial statements for the financial year 2021. These are Pages 159 through 229 of the annual report, which has been explained in detail. First and foremost, I should give the floor to the Chairman of our Audit Committee, Frank Dorjee, to say a few words about the work of the Audit Committee in 2021 and the cooperation with the external auditor. And then I shall give the floor to Bas Savert on behalf of Deloitte.

[Interpreted] As Chairman of the Audit Committee, I'm looking back on a year in which Randstad return to above-market growth after 2020 had been affected by the impact of COVID. Randstad has shown that it's flexible and can respond quickly to changes in the market. Randstad achieved a record revenue in 2021 of EUR 20.6 billion with an EBITDA of EUR 1.1 billion. And free cash flow amounted to EUR 590 million. Randstad's business model is flexible, resilient and strong. Most of the meetings of the Audit Committee took place prior to the publication of the quarterly results. Prior to the Audit Committee, I personally had proprietary meetings with the CFO, Directors of Global Control, Global Financial Reporting Business Risk & Audit. In the Audit Committee meetings, in addition to the CEO, CFO and the external auditor, these directors are also present in this meeting. The focus of the Audit Committee meetings was on the financial reports, draft press releases and reported reports of the external auditor and the Business Risk & Audit departments. Many other issues were also discussed such as tax and legal topics, financing, taxes, review of the finance function, et cetera. And we also spent a lot of time on data protection and information security, so-called cybersecurity issues and IT in general sense. Since Randstad works with personal data, data protection and information security is a great importance for the company, and several programs were rolled out in 2021. And this is also in connection with the fact that in general, number of cyberattacks is increasing and becoming more sophisticated, the Audit Committee is therefore closely involved in and monitor the progress of these programs in Randstad. The Audit Committee also discussed and approved the audit plan of the external auditor, Deloitte, and the Business Risk & function plan -- Audit function. And as usual, we've paid attention to further improving internal control and the audit environment. Every quarter, the Audit Committee not only discusses the findings of the external auditor but also the quarterly report at the Business Risk & Audit department. In 2021, the Business Risk & Audit department was further reinforced by means of training and by hiring IT audit specialists. And also in 2021, the Business Risk & Audit function focused on the impact of COVID-19 and took action to more rigorously monitor and improve the key controls most relevant to this crisis. And local management is closely involved in this process. And the function limited itself to the audits of the most relevant financial and operational processes that have changed in the pandemic. This included, for instance, processes adapted to working from home and controls included therein. The management letters of the external auditors, both Deloitte and BDO, were discussed. Most important findings are particularly the following. In connection with new COVID-19, Deloitte and BDO selected a number of critical controls of testing. The maturity levels of key financial processes remain high. And the main reported findings included the IT environment and documenting controls. [ Monster ] continues to focus on improving general IT controls. Turn at the top is good. And there were a limited number of fraud cases, which are not material. Randstad's objective is to improve internal control in several country organizations each year and thus raise the bar to a high level. Since the start of the pandemic, a quarterly company-wide risk analysis is performed partly based on the risk reported by local management of all local companies via a risk register. And as usual, it performs a key control self-assessment every 6 months. The Business Risk & Audit function, in turn, independently tests the quality of control of the various operating companies and compares the internal audit results with management self-assessments. The results are discussed every 6 months as well with the Executive Board and the Audit Committee. The risk appetite was also discussed in the Executive Board and the Audit Committee, thus, giving further substance to the annual improvement of the internal control system and measures. As an Audit Committee, we paid further attention to 4 specific aspects in 2021: valuation of goodwill; valuation of the position with regard to deferred taxes; fraud risk, that I just touched on, and some fraud cases, which fortunately are not material to Randstad; and furthermore, developments in reporting of nonfinancial information relating to ESG. And the auditor reviewed the nonfinancial information for the first time this year and issued a limited assurance statement to that effect. Before I give the floor back to our external auditor, Mr. Savert of Deloitte. I'd like to mention the following. For Mr. Bas Savert, this is his last Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Randstad -- for Randstad that is. Since he is stepping down from the assignment, that he will be succeeded by Mr. [ Ben DeLise ], who is sitting next to him. And we would like to thank Bas for all his work for us over the past few years. And now I'd like to give the floor to Bas Savert.

[Interpreted] Yes. Thank you again. Bas Savert again at Deloitte. This was my fifth year as a signing partner on Randstad. And I'm happy to pass on the baton to [ Ben ]. These are our last few years because given the European rules, we have a maximum term of 10 years, and [ Ben ] will be taking over. So we did the audit. And in the short presentation, I shall go into the details. Our extended opinion appears on Page 230 of the annual report and was signed on 14 February, which was the date that we performed the final duties. And in that statement, we indicate the responsibilities for the financial statements as well as for the other sections in the annual report, such as the other data from the management report and the information relating to sustainability. In addition to our extensive statement, as Jacques van Broek mentioned, this year -- and also with Frank, we included a limited assurance report concerning sustainability. That reflects the sustainability information as in the annual report as well, a few pages about fiscal information at the back of the annual report -- at the end of it. And that's a moving target, so to speak. So regulations about sustainability and assurance are still in the pipeline, so there's no obligation for a company to apply assurance to those data. So we're a little bit ahead of that development. But in 2022, especially in subsequent years, that regulation is likely to come about and be adopted, and more information will need to be disclosed as well as insurance provided. As for our communication with the Audit Committee, as Frank Dorjee explained, at some points in the year in contact and discussed reports and share the main findings with the Audit Committee. Also in consultation without the management, materiality has been increased with respect to last year. You may remember that in the past 2 years, because of COVID, we took a few cautious measures in part because our results were deteriorating, and our materiality was based on the results. So last year, the materiality was lowered. In the course of this year, we noticed a significant improvement in the results. So we restored the materiality level from 2019. Our scope was very comparable if you look at which countries were included in our duties, they were very comparable to those in previous years. And that scope achieved 85% coverage in terms of the group revenue. And that part of the revenue was subject to the audit and other procedures. The sections that were not subject to the audit either BDO did work there, and we referred to that, or we checked the main developments for the group as a whole there. Our main findings appear in the auditor's opinion. And we highlighted one main issue this year, which was the valuation of goodwill. One year before, there were 2 additional items there relating to the COVID grants, which were very relevant at the time. At least that was a new item to everybody. And last year, there was additional consideration for a cybersecurity incident. In 2021, neither trend was as relevant, and that's why they no longer figure as a core issue in the auditor's opinion. In addition to the core issues through other points of consideration such as sustainability and other developments, remuneration remains a focus for us as does fraud and compliance. In our opinion, we reported about fraud. As Frank Dorjee mentioned, nothing truly exciting in large groups, such as the one with 10,000 employees. There are always minor fraud incidents. It would be just concerning if nothing was reported about them. Of course, they're properly tracked, and we take note of them, but we did not notice anything out of the ordinary in our capacity. I think I'll leave it at that. I think that basically summarizes what I intended to summarize. Thank you very much for listening.

[Interpreted] Okay. Thank you, Frank and Bas. Do you have any questions about the financial statements or the auditor's opinion, which appears on Page 230 through to Page 237? Mr. [ Stevens ], you have the floor.

[Interpreted] Mr. Chairman, based on my questions last year, I have another question about cybersecurity. Those hackers are becoming increasingly skilled especially at fraud. And apparently, there were some minor fraud cases. But where do you draw the line?

[Interpreted] Thank you. Jacques?

[Interpreted] I'll hand that over to our CTO, Rene.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Mr. Stevens. That is indeed an extremely important topic, security in all areas as well as fraud. We do everything we can to ensure that our customers and talent receive optimal service. In 2020 -- October 2020, there was a significant incident [indiscernible]. It was settled without major damage. We did consult our customers carefully and took all kinds of measures, and I'm satisfied to say that from 2021 through today, no major incidents took place. But developments continue to accelerate. Especially given the war in Ukraine, we're particularly alert. So we're always on full alert with a great many parties to exchange knowledge to bother -- to challenge our defense lines. It's a constant race. It's ongoing. As for fraud, that's part of our standard work. As Mr. Savert stated, that's under control. There was nothing out of the ordinary there, but we're alert to that as well. We want a safe workplace. And we monitor that very closely.

Thank you, Rene. Now about cybersecurity, you mentioned that you work with the various parties had the coordination work because working together with parties will merely increase the risk of being hacked. So we tried to use the expertise of as many parties as possible. For example, our regular IT suppliers share their insights with us. We have specialized companies that focus on cybersecurity and try to hack us proactively in an agreed way so that we get an honest attack and develop measures accordingly. So we gather as much information as possible about all kinds of methods and ways of testing defense lines to get ahead in the game. We want to avert the problems.

[Interpreted] I am a bit concerned about the inland revenue service, the government and payment transactions, suppose that they immobilized payments. And in the Netherlands, what would plan B be for Randstad? How do you feel about it? What are the laws? Because many governments haven't taken care of things. And if they haven't, then there will be problems for Randstad as well. So I'm curious how you see this together with your coworkers.

[Interpreted] Okay. Who would like answer the question about payment transaction. Do we have any old fashion payment slips in our vault? Rene?

[Interpreted] Okay. I always expressed our weakest link in terms of if there is an issue with payment transactions, then all of the Netherlands will suffer from that. I worked together with Karen on that because she is responsible for business continuity or fallback scenarios if systems are not in working order for a long time. And then for example, we might revert to the invoices from the previous month or other things up to and including manual solutions if it comes to that. But we still have a lot of work there. It's a complex undertaking and requires our ongoing attention.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Rene.

I'm Mr. [ Kane ] from the VEB. I have 2 more questions. One relates to economic value creation. You mentioned that repeatedly in the annual report but unfortunately, not on my 2 favorite pages, 244 and 245, are the 10-year review. I like figures. And often, you see nice patterns and cycles of the companies. And what I noticed is that the EVA, that was a big hype in the '90s. But I didn't see any reporting about EVA on those 2 pages, 244 and 245. At least you could consider reporting return on invested capital, so I would suggest that perhaps you include that another year. And as long as you don't list that, I'm curious how the EVA has progressed in the past year and what the expectations are for the next year. The next question is entirely different, I can -- but now it relates to the auditor, but I won't ask him that. I'm asking the Audit Committee this question. The Audit Committee report in the annual report they did. And that also includes how the Audit Committee feels about the external auditor. I'll translate this nicely. Deloitte's performance is generally satisfactory, and this is somewhat comparable to last year. If I would bring such marks home, my dad would beat me because, as you know, I'm of Indonesian extraction, and those parents are tough. Are you thrifty and rigid or there are areas where you're not really so satisfied and expect more from the external auditor? So am I reading some note of cautionary reluctance into that one sentence is my question.

[Interpreted] Thank you for these interesting questions. I'm pleased that Pages 244 and 245 are your favorites. They are also my favorite pages explains about [indiscernible] life is about the level as well as the business. And I know several people here who are truly interested in value creation, whether it's EVA or whatever you want to call it. So I'm curious how Henry and Sander feel about this.

Also it's my favorite page because when you take a bit of a distance, you see really the big trends. We definitely keep EVA is a very important number to look at but not in a very short-term context. So if you look at our returns, I mean the market is taking our cost of capital at about 8%. So we have a return on the capital [ 16 ], some EVA of [ 8 ] in there. And we have internal reports, when we look at certain parts of the company where we are creating the link between EVA and share price and company valuations, et cetera, et cetera. So it's alive and kicking, but we feel it's maybe a little bit too much to be going to a quarterly reporting for it.

But this is a yearly or 10-year report. Is that something you will be willing to consider at least to report it? Or is this something to be considered as well that's more or less secret?

Let me take it [ onboard ] without giving a promise.

At least, I would suggest when that's more common, I think, return on invested capital or return on capital employed, a ratio like that really makes sense. That's pretty common among companies to report that to their shareholders.

Yes.

Yes. So let me tell you where I'm coming from on that subject, not on the ratio. So this is Henry. I grew up in an environment where performance is ticket to the game. Growing the business, growing the profits, that is a ticket to the game before because, otherwise, you cannot even get to the broader societal impact. So that's how I look at things. It's number one, two and three. Any other things we add on top of that because I know if the performance is not there, the questions today would have been about a very different subject, and that's what we want to avoid.

[Interpreted] As Chair of the Audit Committee, strict, fair and thrifty, that rings a bell. Yes, it's almost Calvinist. That's a good question. Each year, we evaluate Deloitte's audit and we look at the report cooperation in cost. And in the previous Audit Committee, we also consider the figures that countries -- the [ marks ] countries attribute to their interactions with Deloitte. And it's above 7 out of 10, so that's good. Now I'll basically abandon my Calvinist approach, but we're satisfied with Deloitte and BDO. We work well together, and that's why, once again, on the agenda, there'll be according to the agenda, we'll appoint them for 2023.

[Interpreted] Thank you. Excellent. Now on to agenda item 2d, which is the explanation of the policy on reserves and dividends. Henry Schirmer already presented this topic. Are there any questions? No? Then on to agenda item 2e, the proposal to determine regular dividend for the 2021 financial year. It is proposed that a regular dividend be paid for 2021 of EUR 2.19 per ordinary share, which corresponds to a distribution rate of 50% of the underlying earnings per share. The dividend payment on preference B and C shares totals EUR 8.2 million. Are there any questions? No? Then moving on to agenda item 2f, the proposal to determine a special dividend for the 2021 financial year. It is proposed that a special dividend be paid for the 2021 financial year of EUR 2.81 per ordinary share. Are there any questions about that? None. Then I will ask you to vote on the agenda items 2 if you haven't already done so. In the meantime, we will move on to agenda item 3a, which is the discharge from liability of the members of the Executive Board for their management. I will propose the following discharge resolution. The General Meeting of Shareholders shall grant discharge to the Executive Board members for their management in the 2021 financial year, as apparent from the financial statement, the annual report, the other documents presented to the general meeting and the explanations provided at this meeting. Are there any questions about that? No. Then we will move on to agenda item 3b, which is the discharge from liability of the Supervisory Board for their supervision of the management. I propose the following discharge policy, the General Meeting of Shareholders shall discharge the Supervisory Board from liability for their supervision in the 2021 financial year as far as this is apparent from the financial statements, the annual report and the other documents presented to the general meeting and the explanations provided at this meeting. Any questions about that? No. If not, then would you please vote about agenda items 3a and 3b if you have not already done so. That takes us to agenda item 4a, the proposal to amend the remuneration policy for the Executive Board. We propose the amendments previously presented by our Chairperson, Annet Aris, on pages -- [ Page numbers, says the speaker, checking the page numbers. Not quite page numbers. ] Are there any questions? If not, then everything was very clear, Annet. Would you please vote on the proposal to amend the remuneration policy for the Executive Board. That takes us to agenda item 4b, the proposal to approve the performance-related remuneration of the Executive Board in performance shares. It is proposed that this remuneration in performance shares, including matching shares, be approved for a 5-year period. Are there any questions about that? If not, that takes us to agenda item 4c, the proposal to amend the remuneration policy for the Supervisory Board. We are now proposing that you approve the amendments already presented by Annet. Are there any questions about that? No. Then may I ask you to vote about the proposal to amend the remuneration policy for the Supervisory Board. Before we discuss agenda item 5, I would like to say a bit about Jacques van den Broek stepping down as CEO and Chair of the Executive Board. Jacques, after 34 years, we are reaching the end of your truly exceptional career within Randstad. In 1988, you joined your first Randstad branch. At the time, Randstad was run by Frits Goldschmeding and operated in 5 countries, had nearly 2 billion guilders in revenue, EUR 800 million. In a single year, Randstad placed 55,000 temporary staff. And I believe that there were 2,800 employees at the time. In 2004, at age 44, you were appointed a member of the Executive Board. That was the team including Ben Noteboom, Leo Lindelauf and Robert Jan van de Kraats. That team was exceptionally successful. In addition to being responsible for countries, you became responsible for major clients and actively contributed to strategic development, especially concept development. The successful team made great many acquisitions and Randstad considerably increased its footprint in that sector. We all recall the essential step with Vedior. In 2014, you were appointed CEO and Chair of the Executive Board. Under your aegis, the revenue rose from EUR 17 billion to nearly EUR 25 billion last year. And profitability increased from EUR 700 million to over EUR 1 billion, as Henry just demonstrated. The number of employees increased from 25,000 to 40,000. And perhaps most important is the number of temporary staff working each week, over 700,000. So year-on-year, EUR 200 million. And as was already mentioned, tens of thousands of people were provided with permanent jobs. Under your aegis, Randstad became global market leader. You're very competitive and know how important it is to win. You showed that again today. You were instrumental in the transformation of Randstad, both in commercial expansion and the Digital Tech and Touch strategy. Over the previous difficult years, as a consequence of COVID-19, we saw the true leader of the company. You excelled for many of us because of your unlimited and inexhaustible energy, visibility, resolve. And I wrote opportunism, but you changed that to optimism. The performance by Randstad in 2021 reveals that this was very clearly fruitful. Jacques, you embody Randstad's DNA, attribute great value to and in part determined Randstad's strong culture and values internally but also explicitly externalized as well. On behalf of the Supervisory Board, the Executive Board, all employees and all those involved in Randstad, and I'm certain that I'm speaking on behalf of everybody present here. I would like to thank you for your unforgettable and exceptional contribution to the company. I wish you and your loved ones the very best for the future. And it says here that we're going to miss you, Jacques. Thank you so much.

[Interpreted] I couldn't possibly add anything to that. That's excellent. Well, the last day is very exceptional. Some of you have been there, too. And then you think back what matters most to me in addition to everything you say is that many people respond not to what I said or did, but to their feeling about me and how they relate to me, and that I was present, which is a huge challenge in a global company because we're basically a family-run company, a mom-and-pop business. With all that growth, it's been difficult to manage. This is a small company. This is the first time in 2 years that we've got everybody back in this building, and that's the company. And they have to radiate that over in their own companies, from Argentina, to Canada, to Australia. Everybody always asked, what does your CEO do? I really couldn't answer that. I feel that I was a handful when I was younger, Wasn't I, Robert Jan? Well, I've mellowed over time, but I was always looking to improve. I'm very proud of this team. You mentioned the first team. That was a magnificent team, but they were all middle-aged Dutch men, and that's not how you run a company such as this one. If you look at the questions from the video, you have to reflect that in your team as well. So we've got the team on multiple continents, multiple nationalities and multiple backgrounds. We have to take that forward. And I get a lot of questions about why Sander is not homegrown, but it's also important given everything that we've described about digitization. You need to take it to the next level, you need a different background. And that we're Randstad, in a mom-and-pop business, is abundantly present, as you've noted. So I'm very confident about the future. I don't know what I'm going to do yet. I didn't plan my career very well, so I'm delighted that I was able to stick around for a while. Thank you very much for your support as shareholders in recent years.

[Interpreted] Well, that's easy to proceed to the next item, 5a, homegrown. The proposal to reappoint Chris Heutink as a member of the Executive Board. You would have read his resume, it was included with the agenda. Since his appointment to the Executive Board in 2014, Chris Heutink has proven to be a strong leader given his broad management experience and operational responsibility for a large number of countries. Poland was just mentioned. Chris lived there. He's a stable factor in the Executive Board, and the Supervisory Board is pleased to propose him for reappointment of a third term of 4 years. Chris, would you like to give a brief comment?

[Interpreted] Absolutely. I do remember joining the Executive Board, that was when Jacques became CEO, that was 8 years ago. And actually, I saw this entire period of time as a sort of continuous adjustment to what was going on in the world, always in a positive sense. Even things, such as COVID crisis, Jacques sort of was able to give it a positive spin. And I always appreciated it enormously. But it was always a motivation for me to do what I needed to do. And what I needed to do was to make sure that the operations performed in an optimal way. And I do this with a committed team of business leaders, and here all as well, a committed team at the Executive Board level. And this challenge is constant because conditions change, you're in different cultures, at different markets and maturity levels. And at the end of the day, the goal is to get as many people to jobs as possible. And we can call this touching 500 million working lives. But day after day after day, that means retaining people, recruiting people, engaging people. And that way, you have a company that is able to excel. And it's a reason for me to get out of bed every morning. It is the best possible page of the annual report, and that is this one, seeing the possible. Where can we operate in the market? Where can we do things for people? Sometimes in very difficult conditions, such as in Poland with the Ukrainian refugee crisis. But this really driving human forward, looking at the human potential, Jacques referred to this at the beginning of his presentation, this is part of our genes, deep in my genes, particularly mine, everybody's genes but particularly in mine. And so I'd really like to continue to do this for another 4 years.

[Interpreted] Chairman, would you please vote on the matter of Chris Heutink?

[Interpreted] Absolutely, you are right. Are there any questions?

[Interpreted] Thank you, Chairman. Yes, well, nowadays, we are curious about what individual's position in the market is. So my question is, have you been approached by a headhunter or an executive search agency?

[Interpreted] You mean over the past 30 years, or the past 4 years?

[Interpreted] No, I would say 4 years.

[Interpreted] No.

[Interpreted] Okay. Short but sweet. And actually, this is the same question I'd like to ask to Mr. Schirmer, yes, but we're going to address that one later on.

[Interpreted] Yes. Well, I can say a few words about this. [ It's Jacques ] I know headhunters, we're kind of a headhunter. I know how these people think, and these people know that they cannot lure Chris away from Randstad. They're not even going to start to try. I don't know whether that's Henry's answer. But in all these years, 34 years, I've never been approached by a headhunter. On the one hand, I'm very disappointed. But they know that they don't have a chance in hell.

[Interpreted] So now I would like to ask you to vote on Chris Heutink's reappointment should you have not done so. And yes, this takes us to 5b, which is the proposal to reappoint Henry Schirmer as a member of the Executive Board. You will find his resume and the explanation in the agenda. In his first term as member of the Executive Board and CFO, Henry Schirmer has made a valuable contribution building up the financial function and contributing to Randstad's excellent operational and financial performance. Supervisory Board therefore proposes to reappoint him for a second term of 4 years. Henry, would you like to briefly comment on this and perhaps answer a predictable question?

Yes. Let me start. First of all, I can't believe that it's 4 years ago already that I was sitting here and that time has gone very quickly. It's very, very rewarding 4 years, but also equally challenging with the COVID period in there. But in a strange way, when the going gets tough, the tough gets going. When I started, I remember Jacques told me about the visibility of 6 weeks, and I wanted to have kind of 10-year plans. And he said, "No, no, Henry. 6 weeks is good enough in the beginning." But actually, I'm fortunate enough to have seen the real character of the company, the real strength and how the company came together in times of crisis, and it was very rewarding for me to be part of that. I would be very, very grateful for the opportunity to continue the journey. Jacques especially, thanks for your mentorship and the opportunity. But also to you, Sander and the team, I would be very much looking forward kind of continuing writing the next chapter of that unbelievably cool and iconic company. And to your question, yes, I have been approached. Maybe the market is not so clear whether I would be lifelong for Randstad, but they did have. But I said it very clear, I said, "No. I will stay with Randstad." And that is why I'm sitting here.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Henry. There's a question.

[Interpreted] Yes, 4 years of Randstad. And before that, Unilever for a long, long time. And Unilever was #1 in its category. So my question is, from the Unilever expertise perspective, how do you see Randstad? What did you contribute to accelerate things? And what is it that you'll be contributing over the next 4 years in order to make sure that Randstad becomes #1 within that category? That would be wonderful, wouldn't it? Also with respect to Paul Polman of Unilever. You have understood that you need to switch on time because Shell and Unilever both moved to London. They're not doing very well, and Randstad is much more stable. So it was a wonderful move. And if I were you, I'd stay.

For the experience, I had 28 years with Unilever. And what I learned under the leadership of Paul Polman is that, the more successful you are business-wise and financially, the more credibility you have to talk about ESG and about little things. And both things are not topics which are fighting against each other, they're actually -- they are supporting each other. And I don't want to make a remark about Unilever today, but that is definitely something which I carry with me and Randstad is absolutely there. When -- the more successful we are financially, the more impact we have and the other way around. So it's, in that sense, the perfect company for me. Yes, I've learned a lot there. But I mean, that it's a very steep learning curve here as well and that learning curve will continue. But no, I never look back to the time. I cherish the second when I decided to join Randstad.

[Interpreted] I'd just like to compliment you because this year, it strikes me that you are communicating very transparently while laughing. So Randstad is really doing very well. So I'd like to compliment you for that.

[Interpreted] Well, I'd just like to add, because I was hearing Jacques saying, we are #1 worldwide. I was hearing him in my ear. So I just wanted to add that. So of course, there's a lot of work to be done, and we have great faith in Sander. Thank you very much for your compliments. Now I'd request you to vote on the reappointment of Henry Schirmer as a member of the Executive Board. Item 6a, for that, I'd like to give the floor to Rudy Provoost as member of the Governance and Nomination Committee.

[Interpreted] Yes, it is a true pleasure on behalf of the Supervisory Board to put the reappointment of Wout Dekker to you as a member of the Supervisory Board. His involvement in the committees and his duty as Chairman are extremely valuable to Randstad, a very important source of continuity, which is the reason why, as a Supervisory Board, we are proposing to reappoint Wout for a fourth and last period of 4 years and -- 2 years, sorry. Final term of 2 years. Wout's CV and reasons for reappointment can be found in the agenda. Wout, would you like to add something?

[Interpreted] Yes. Well, we have a standard in the Netherlands, 2 times, 4 years; and then we have an exception 2 times, 2 years. This was discussed even without me being present in the Supervisory Board 2 years ago. But since we knew that there was a succession planning, and I'm sure you understand that it's not easy to find a good successor for Jacques. So I was asked to deal with the succession planning, looking for, but also onboarding the CEO. And I would say, take a look at the team. Because the Supervisory Board, the real and true impact on the company is -- has to do with the appointments. We have other roles, but the appointments, the -- where you can really make an impact is in the appointment of members of both the Executive Board and Supervisory Board. And if I look around, I'm so proud of the Executive Board and also my colleagues in the Supervisory Board. It would be a true privilege to be able to chair the Supervisory Board for another 2 years. Are there any questions? Go ahead.

[Interpreted] My name is [ Ken ] of VEB. You touched upon it yourself. In the Netherlands, we prefer to have 8 years in governance. In an exceptional situation, we add another 2 years. So that was already 2 years ago. So another 2 years. I understand your considerations. You don't want the CEO and the Chairman of the Supervisory Board to leave at the same time. On the other hand, it's not that the other members of this Supervisory Board are all new, no. Of course, if you'd had a proper succession planning for the CEO, you wouldn't have had the problem in the Supervisory Board. Because you could see this coming, you knew that you were almost 8 years in this role, or 10 years. So that's all predictable. I mean, you just said, looking ahead 6 weeks, that's fine. But in governance, it may be sensible to do so. With all due respect to everything you've done there, there are no scandals involved with you, you're doing really well. But it's a small spot, I would say, in terms of governance, and you could have prevented this should you have taken adequate measures 4 years ago, for instance, by having the Vice Chairman move up a notch. So it's not a scandal, it's just maybe a tiny stain. But with all this wonderful performance, this is just one tiny cloud, I'd say.

[Interpreted] Thank you for this comment.

[Interpreted] I was looking at Wout Dekker's resume, and it greatly pleases me that someone who was a Supervisory Director at the Princess Maxima Children's Oncology Centre. And I know that I shouldn't mention [ for mauve ] because you are working for an organization that covers Lamborghinis and Bentleys and Gazelle bicycles. But someone with such a track record, as far as I'm concerned, he can stay on for much, much longer. And obviously, we have to deal with formalities. But we must especially make sure that people with a specific character and who are really good at what they do, that they continue to work in the highest echelons of business in the Netherlands.

[Interpreted] Well, time to vote. Thank you. Thank you for those wonderful words. Well, there were no questions, they were just observations. Thank you for that -- or reflections. And if you're ready, I'd like to ask you to vote.

[Interpreted] Mr. Stevens, I didn't hear your questions. [ That's Mr. Miedema. ]

[Interpreted] I have an issue with my vote, I have a black screen.

[Interpreted] [ Mr. Miedema says ], you can vote until after agenda item 8, but I'll make sure that someone approaches you to help you.

[Interpreted] Agenda item 6b, the proposal to reappoint Frank Dorjee as member of the Supervisory Board. You can read his details in the agenda. As Chairman of the Audit Committee, Frank Dorjee has fulfilled a crucial role in our Supervisory Board. We therefore propose to reappoint him for a third term for 2 years. Frank, would you like to quickly comment on this reappointment?

[Interpreted] Thank you, Wout. Randstad, I believe, is a fantastic company with a wonderful purpose, being placing candidates with clients. Over the past years, we've seen how strong Randstad's business model is, flexible, resilient. 2020 even, when we saw a revenue drop to 20%, Randstad was still cash flow positive and profitable. 2021, we had a record revenue of EUR 25 billion. I must add that management deserves a compliment because, on time, they saw -- in time, they saw that it was important to hire 7,000 new employees. With this Tech and Touch strategy, Randstad is embarking on this journey. And I hope that over the next 2 years, I can continue to contribute to this journey.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Frank. Are there any questions? No? So you can cast your vote. And explanation with respect to item 6c, the proposal to reappoint Annet Aris as member of the Supervisory Board. You will find the details on the agenda. During her first term as a member of our Supervisory Board, Annet Aris has performed and contributed greatly, especially as Chairman of -- Chair of the Remuneration Committee. Supervisory Board proposes to reappoint her for the second term of 4 years. Annet, would you like to comment?

Wout, I always look, first of all, whether the industry is interesting, whether the challenges are interested and whether the company is not about to go bankrupt. But more important than those factors, I look at the culture of the company, at the composition of the team, Supervisory Board and Executive Board and about the relationship within the teams and between the teams. And when I had my first conversations with Randstad 4 years ago, it seemed to tick all the boxes. And I can only confirm that after 4 years, that indeed, it's true, all the boxes have been ticked. Randstad has a special place in my heart because it's all about people. It's about people making people successful in their professional lives and giving them an economic basis. The past 4 years have been more of a roller coaster than I expected, thanks to COVID, but I think we also achieved a lot. Most importantly, we are sitting here with a great and diverse leadership team which culminated now in the appointment of Sander. We made significant progress on our digitalization journey, my special area of interest. In the coming 4 years, I hope to support the successful transition of the CEOs, which will be, they're big shoes to fill; to further the digitalization journey of Randstad and find the right balance between Tech and Touch; and also as Chair of the Remuneration Committee, to further build a sustainable, motivating and stakeholder-oriented remuneration system. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Are there any questions? Comment? No. Okay -- yes, you do have a comment.

[Interpreted] Well, I think it would be great for Annet Aris to stick with us because she is also a Supervisory Director at ASML, and one of my best-performing shares, well above the 1,000%. And she is also the #1 as the most influential women in the Netherlands, in corporate Netherlands. So it's very important and instrumental to help lots of women to move to the highest echelons. And also she has a background at INSEAD or [ Tenable ]. So wonderful. Yes, wonderful. I very much appreciate her, she's good at communicating.

[Interpreted] So this is a clear vote -- word of advice in terms of voting in favor of Annet Aris. Okay, you can cast your vote. On item 7, 3 proposals: 7a, proposal to designate the Executive Board as authorized body to issue shares and to restrict and/or exclude the preemptive right to issue shares; 7b, proposal to authorize the Executive Board to repurchase shares; and 7c, proposal to cancel the repurchased shares. In the explanatory notes, you'll find the details. Are there any questions about any one of these 3 proposals? No questions. Okay, so you can cast your vote on these 3 proposals should you not have done so. This brings us to item 8a, which is a proposal to appoint Claartje Bulten as a Board member of the Trust Office Preference Shares, Randstad. You will find her resume in the agenda to this meeting. In accordance with the Article of Association with the foundation, the Executive Board of Randstad proposes to appoint her as a Board Member A for an initial term of 4 years. Claartje Bulten is present here. Would you like to introduce yourself?

[Interpreted] Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Claartje Bulten. I'm Professor, Enterprise Law, and I've been this for about 10 years at the Radboud University in Nijmegen. I'm also Chair of the Van der Heijden Institute, which is a scientific research institute for corporate law. And this institute was set up about more than 50 years ago, much older than I am. And I'm also Chair of the Corporate Law Committee. I have several additional positions, but this is one of the best ones. And the Committee Corporate Law is an advisory board for legislators with respect to corporate law. And if you feel that shareholders don't have sufficient rights, you should come and talk to me, see if I can do something about it. Why did I present myself as a candidate for the foundation for the -- of the trust office? I think that Randstad, quite apart from all the wonderful statistics that we read in the annual report and that were presented here today, Randstad simply is a marvelous company. And I think it would be a true honor if, at arm's length, because that is what you do if you become a member of the Board of a Trust Office. At arm's length, you can make a small contribution. Thank you.

[Interpreted] Are there any questions? This brings us to agenda item 8b -- no, there's a question. Mr. Stevens? You looked at me, so I thought -- I'm sorry, I just -- I'm staring at the horizon.

[Interpreted] Yes, well, our question is how did you find Ms. Bulten? Did you yourself started -- did you yourself start to look for her? Or was it through a recruitment agency? What was the remit? Did you have a long list, and did you then make a short list of candidates? Was that discussed in a smaller committee? If so, what was discussed? Who discussed it? Did this lead to a selection of a limited number of candidates? Did you then talk to candidates? How did this process evolve?

[Interpreted] Mr. Stevenson, [ says the Chairman ]. Thank you. Jacques is already smiling because this is indeed the procedure that we need to follow. Her profile was drafted, and we have networks and interesting names came up. And here, with succession planning, you can see this coming. So we are extremely pleased with these 2 candidates.

[Interpreted] Yes, but we still don't know whether there are several candidates. Were there several candidates? Was there a long list, was there a short list? So what happened?

[Interpreted] Right. I'm going to look for a bit of assistance from our Corporate Secretary.

[Interpreted] Thank you, Wout. I did think that you turn to me. Mr. Stevens, an excellent question. This is a position that is important, and it's important that we have capable people to perform this position. But it's not a very intense position time-wise. So it is difficult to find good candidates. And we did this through our own network and also the network of the existing Board members of the Trust Office. And that's how we shortlisted a number of candidates. We approached them, explained what the role is, what it entails, being a Board member. And after our first conversation with Claartje Bulten, at least, the Supervisory Board decided to nominate these 2 persons for appointment.

[Mr. Stevens] Yes, Miss Bulten introduced herself. But nonetheless -- she did so in detail. But I would like to know how this process evolved in her view. Did you have interviews? Did you look at the future, future perspectives? How was the future discussed? That's it, more or less. But the rest -- because you covered the rest, so I don't have to ask you about that.

[Interpreted] Your questions are clear. Would you like to answer that question?

[Interpreted] Yes. In addition to the fact that, as far as I'm concerned, these interviews were excellent, and I really am looking forward to this position -- performing this position that isn't -- doesn't take up that much time.

[Interpreted] Good morning. My name is [ van fleet ]. Well, we are struggling with these foundations because foundations tend to agree with their Board. So how can you act at arm's length? Because usually, when we ask questions about what a board member asked in a foundation, we never got answers to that -- to those questions.

Well, in this case, we're talking about a foundation in which the shareholders or [ Speaker's speaking off mic, the interpreter cannot hear what is being said. Speakers speaking off mic. ]

[Interpreted] Yes. Well, these meetings, I don't know how these meetings are being convened. And I once attended one of these meetings when I had a voting right, and it was extremely difficult to get satisfactory answers to my questions. So I attended one of these foundations meetings and there wasn't enough counterbalance, I would say. Everybody always agreed with the Board of the foundation.

[Interpreted] Well, perhaps I can help you out here because we obviously also engage with the Board of the Trust Office. So if they disagree with us, they will tell us. And so it's absolutely transparent, just as open and transparent.

[Interpreted] I didn't hear the Trust Office in this meeting.

[Interpreted] Yes, you don't have to hear the Trust Office because we already engaged with the Trust Office. And coincidentally, they agreed with us.

[Interpreted] Chairman, perhaps I can make one addition. This Trust Office is not a typical trust office that you would expect because this is a Trust Office of Preference Shares. These are financing preference shares for which depository receipts have been issued, held by a number of institutes. And these institutes, as Annelies van der Pauw already said, can be given a voting proxy to exercise the voting right. And if they don't make use of that, the Board is here to do so. So it's not an anti-takeover trust office or anything along those lines. That's not the case at Randstad. Mr. Dekker?

[Interpreted] Thank you, Jelle, for clarifying this point.

[Interpreted] [ Ken ] of VEB. Well, there are very many types of trust offices. And often people say, "No problem. If you want to vote, you can get the authorization." But sometimes, there are problems. But here, there's no power. It's got nothing to do with anti-takeover or anything along those lines. No problem with that. But Ms. Bulten of course has a very important position at the University. She teaches there, and she may put forward certain positions. And now all of a sudden, these positions may involve her own role. So she's someone who is hands-on, but also teaches. So I'm wondering whether there's a conflict here. So you teach corporate law, and this is not a trust office, an antitakeover trust office. But you could say that it could be a bit in conflict, one thing with the other. That's the only question that I have.

[Interpreted] Claartje?

[Interpreted] No, no, no. No conflict here. For the simple reason, if I teach corporate law, I teach positive law. I explain the law and how it works as we speak. It's all enshrined in law, in case law, the Supreme Court. And then I could perhaps give my views of what the Supreme Court has ruled. But that has very little to do with a company such as Randstad.

[Interpreted] Well, I think it would be excellent if universities too were to become involved in this wonderful company. And I think it's great that she is Supervisory Director at KPMG, which is not the smallest of auditors firms. All of a sudden, this reminded me of 2 celebrities, Chantal Janzen and Anouk, and they didn't know anything about it. We just had this sexual harassment issue of a television program and also a Director at Ajax. But what strikes me is that there are no #metoo situations coming up at Randstad. So my question is, and you can also look at this from a legal perspective, how can you guarantee that there's no sexual harassment, as happened in the program The Voice of Holland and Ajax?

[Interpreted] Can we address this under any other business? I don't think it's appropriate to discuss here under this point, so I suggest we proceed to the vote. We just heard her voice when we discussed 8b, the proposal to appoint Annelies van der Pauw as member of the Board, Trust Office, Preference Shares Randstad. You'll find her CV with the agenda to this meeting in accordance with the Articles of Association of the Trust Office. The Executive Board of Randstad proposes to appoint her as a Board member A for a first period of 4 years. Annelies van der Pauw is present here. Would you like to introduce yourself?

[Interpreted] Yes, I shall introduce myself. [ This is microphone 4, sorry. ] My name is Annelies van der Pauw. The past 35 years, I've been working as a lawyer, corporate law in an international law firm focusing on mergers and acquisitions, equity capital markets, corporate governance. And at this point in time, I am particularly working in all sorts of sectors in supervisory roles, with the university, a British bank, a market maker, the Stedelijk museum. And the reason I would like to be involved at Randstad at arm's length, as we just said, because I consider Randstad to be very much a socially engaged company. I'm impressed by the cutting-edge technology and the people that I have met. So I'm really looking forward to becoming involved at arm's length.

[Interpreted] Are there any questions? Mr. Stevens? A microphone, we need a microphone. And if the questions are the same, please be concise.

[Interpreted] How you felt about the process?

[Interpreted] Yes, it was a very pleasant process, very pleasant process -- appointment process. Informative, pleasant, transparent.

[Interpreted] Okay. So then you can vote about this appointment. Agenda item 9, proposal to appoint Deloitte as external auditor for financial year 2023. Pursuant to the law, the General Meeting of Shareholders instructs the auditor to audit the financial statements. We propose to instruct Deloitte to audit the financial statements for the forthcoming financial year, 2023. Are there any questions? If not, I would request that you cast your very last vote before we proceed to the next item on the agenda. I shall close the vote. Jelle Miedema will, after any other business, announce results of the vote. And this brings us to agenda item 10. And as we just said, there was a question about #metoo, but I don't see the person who asked the question. So we'll move to the back of the room.

[Interpreted] Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is [ Sven ] from Amsterdam. In the past, the Randstad shareholders meeting was held at 3:00. This time, it's at 1:00. My question is, why is the meeting at 1 and not at 3? I must say that I think it's quite convenient to start the meeting at 1:00.

[Interpreted] [ Chairman. ] Well, we very often have preliminary meetings. You see these international group of people. We have to look at itineraries. Another reason to start a bit earlier, because this evening, there are a large number of stakeholders at Randstad very keen to say goodbye to Jacques van den Broek, so we don't want to start too late.

[Interpreted] So it's a one-off. It's not structural?

[Interpreted] Well, I don't know. You just said that you thought it was convenient, so we'll have to take a long, hard look at this.

[Interpreted] No, no, no. But the saying goodbye is a one-off. [ Says the CEO. ]

[Interpreted] So now perhaps we can deal with the question that was asked before any other business. Jacques?

[Interpreted] We've got procedures for that. We've reported on that in the annual report. We talked about fraud, #metoo, things like that. We have internal procedures for that, and we have confidants, people that can be informed about that. But as just pointed out, you should start being worried if there's -- if nothing is reported. So there have been reports of situations, we've looked into that and dealt with it.

[Interpreted] Are there any further questions for any other business? If not, I shall give the Secretary the floor for the results. Jelle?

[Interpreted] Thank you, Wout. I still owe you the number of shareholders present and registered, 2,796. And they represent in total 228,398,030 shareholders entitled to vote, most of them with a proxy and some of you also in the room without a proxy. 25.2 million on preference shares B and 50,130,350 on preference shares C. In total, they can count 162,267,287, which is 84.5% of the total number of votes that could potentially be cast. 3.6 million can be cast on preference shares B and 5.6 million on preference shares C. These are the financing preference shares. And I believe the results of the vote will now appear on the screen, and we're going to start. There's a whole list of results. First of all, agenda item 2b on the screen. Both in the room and on the website, you will see that you have approved our remuneration report for 2021, 87.88%. It's an advisory vote. Agenda item 2c, financial statement 2020 (sic) [ 2021 ], has been adopted with 99.99%. Agenda item 2e is a proposal to approve the regular dividend, 99.31%. 2f, the proposal to determine the special dividend for the financial year 2021, 99.67%, has been carried. Now agenda item 3a and 3b. Here, you see that the proposal has been carried with 99.75%, so discharge of liability of members of the Executive Board for the management. And the members of Supervisory Board, 99.57% for their supervision of management. And now the remuneration policy, the Executive Board, the amendment has been carried with 88.49%, 4a. And 4b is the approval for 5 years for performance-related remuneration in the form of performance shares for the Executive Board, 93.19%. That is the number of votes or the percentage of votes in favor. And 99.82% of the votes were cast in favor of the amended remuneration policy for the Supervisory Board. And now the composition of the Executive Board. And here, you see that 99.99% of the votes were cast in favor of reappointing Chris Heutink as a member of the Executive Board. And fortunately, also with 99.99%, Henry Schirmer. [ Comment off mic. ] Agenda item 6a. And here, we see somewhat more variation. You see 94.37% of the votes were cast in favor of reappointing Wout Dekker as member of the Supervisory Board. 99.72% was cast in favor of reappointing Frank Dorjee, 6b. And 99.52%, Annet Aris, under Item 6c. Applause, I would say a big hand. This brings us to the agenda items on shares. 94.47% of the votes were cast in favor of the proposal to designate the Executive Board as authorized corporate body to issue shares and restrict or exclude the preemptive right to issue shares, 7b. 99.89% voted in favor of authorizing the Executive Board to repurchase shares, and 99.98% voted in favor of the proposal to cancel repurchased shares. And now the proposals to -- for -- to appoint the positions in the foundation, Claartje Bulten and Annelies van der Pauw, their appointment has been carried with 99.98% of the votes, agenda items 8a and 8b. And then finally, reappointment of Deloitte as external auditor for the financial year 2023, 99.99% of the votes. This proposal was carried.

[Interpreted] [ Chairman. ] Thank you, Jelle. I see that all the resolutions have been taken. I'd like to thank Jelle and his team for organizing all of this and for his assistance just now in answering the matter of principle of what kind of trust office this was. I'd like to close the meeting, and thank you very much for participating and contributing to the meeting. Let's hope that next year, we can meet physically, in-person, or have a hybrid meeting. In any case, we hope that the Ukrainian, the humanitarian crisis, is over. I'd like to invite everybody here to enjoy drink with us, say goodbye to Jacques, and get reacquainted with Sander or the members of the Supervisory Board, the Executive Board. Thank you very much. [Portions of this transcript that are marked [Interpreted] were spoken by an interpreter present on the live call.]