At the Annual General Meeting of SEB on Wednesday (April 10), Board members Jacob Wallenberg, Penny Hughes, Urban Jansson, Tuve Johannesson, Hans-Joachim Körber, Carl Wilhelm Ros, Lars Thunell and Gösta Wiking were re-elected. Marcus Wallenberg, President of Investor, was elected as a new member. Claes Dahlbäck, Chairman of Investor, had declined re-election.
Lars Gustafsson, Executive Vice President and Deputy Group Chief Executive, Head of Group Staffs and Head of the SEB Baltic & Poland Division, was elected as deputy member.
At the statutory Board meeting held in conjunction with the Annual General Meeting, Jacob Wallenberg was elected Chairman. Marcus Wallenberg and Gösta Wiking were elected Deputy Chairmen.
The Board fee was decided to SEK 4.4 M.
A dividend of SEK 4 per share was approved, with a record date of April 15, 2002.
The Meeting also resolved to authorise the Board to decide on the acquisition and sale, via the Stockholm Exchange, and the transfer of a maximum of 7,000,000 of the company's own Series A shares for the employee stock option programme. The authorisation is effective until the Annual General Meeting in 2003. Acquisition and sale shall be at a price within the registered price interval at any given time on the Stockholm Exchange. The purpose of the repurchase is to achieve a cost-efficient hedging arrangement for SEB's employee stock options programme for 2002.
In addition, it was resolved that a maximum of 7,000,000 repurchased shares may be transferred to holders of options in the 2002 employee stock option programme. The transfer may take place during the period March 7, 2005 - March 6, 2009 for SEK 106.20 per share and in other respects in accordance with the terms and conditions of the programme.
A repurchase in 2001 would have resulted in an increase in return on shareholders' equity from 11.91 per cent to 11.95 per cent and earnings per share would have risen from SEK 7.17 to SEK 7.24. At the same time, the core capital ratio would have declined from 7.71 per cent to 7.57 per cent and the total capital ratio from 10.84 per cent to 10.71 per cent.