Media Release
Basel, 4 March 2008
Roche raises dividend by 35 percent
Annual General Meeting approves Annual Report and financial statements for 2007
Roche's Annual General Meeting, which was held today in Basel, has approved all the Board of Directors' proposals. The 662 shareholders in attendance, representing 143,480,308, or 89.7% of a total of 160,000,000 bearer shares, approved the 2007 Annual Report and financial statements. They also authorised a 35% increase in the gross dividend to 4.60 Swiss francs per share and non-voting equity, the twenty-first dividend increase in as many years. The Annual General Meeting also voted to reduce the term of office of directors from four years to three. Bruno Gehrig, Lodewijk J.R. de Vink, Walter Frey and Andreas Oeri were re-elected to the Board of Directors for a further term of office.
In his address to shareholders, Chairman and CEO Franz B. Humer summed up the year as follows: “Roche achieved outstanding results in 2007, continuing the extremely positive development of business seen in recent years. Roche’s growth is very broadly based and will be virtually unaffected by patent expiries in the next few years. Significant challenges and opportunities lie ahead in the healthcare market, and we will be able to tackle them with confidence from a position of strength.”
Dr Humer also emphasised Roche’s pioneering role in the development of personalised healthcare solutions. The concept of personalised medicine uses the genetic differences between patients to develop treatments and tests that are tailored to the needs of specific patient populations.
As of today’s meeting Severin Schwan has succeeded Franz B. Humer as CEO of the Roche Group. In his first speech the new CEO said that “Roche’s strategy is unique and we must use it as a basis for successfully advancing the company over the next years. It is an unfortunate fact that medicines are currently not as effective as they could be in an average of around fifty percent of patients, and in certain indications the success rate is even lower. This is why Roche is systematically pursuing personalised medicine – it is an approach that is capable of increasing the safety, efficacy and cost-efficiency of treatment. And there is no company in the world in a better position to make this approach reality.”
About Roche
Headquartered in Basel, Switzerland, Roche is one of the world’s leading research-focused healthcare groups in the fields of pharmaceuticals and diagnostics. As the world’s biggest biotech company and an innovator of products and services for the early detection, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases, the Group contributes on a broad range of fronts to improving people’s health and quality of life. Roche is the world leader in in-vitro diagnostics and drugs for cancer and transplantation, a market leader in virology and active in other major therapeutic areas such as autoimmune diseases, inflammation, metabolic disorders and diseases of the central nervous system. In 2007 sales by the Pharmaceuticals Division totalled 36.8 billion Swiss francs, and the Diagnostics Division posted sales of 9.3 billion Swiss francs. Roche has R&D agreements and strategic alliances with numerous partners, including majority ownership interests in Genentech and Chugai, and invested over 8 billion Swiss francs in R&D in 2007. Worldwide, the Group employs about 79,000 people. Additional information is available on the Internet at www.roche.com.
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