The answers of Alstom at the June 2015 AGM were happlily more respectful of the shareholders rights than at the previous December 2014 EGM.
Alstom’s Board responded publicly and in writing to the formal “written questions” from the Phitrust Active Investor Open Fund and to the free questions Proxinvest remitted to the Company and to the AMF as earlier posted on this site.
Our final observations concerning these points:
1. The company did not reproduce ou extracts from the “Plea agreement” which did not really allow shareholders to understand the original question of Proxinvest on the nature of the offenses.
We had mentioned : “A subsidiary of Alstom, Alstom Network Schweiz AG (formerly Alstom Prom AG) agreed to plead guilty to violation of US anti-bribery rules and Alstom SA pleaded guilty to failure to comply with the FCPA provisions on bookkeeping accounting and internal control (« The Defendant did knowingly falsify its books, records, or accounts such that its books, records, or accounts did not fairly reflect the transactions and dispositions of the assets of the Defendant »).
The “Plea agreement” (Case 3: 14-cr-00246-JBA Document Filed 12/22/14 Page 5 2 and 3) says that [1] « The Defendant did knowingly fail to implement a system of internal accounting controls sufficient to provide reasonable assurances that (i) transactions were executed in accordance with management’s general or specific authorization; (ii) transactions were recorded as necessary (l) to permit preparation of financial statements in conformity with generally accepted accounting principles or any other criteria applicable to such statements, and (ll) to maintain accountability for assets; (iii) access to assets was permitted only in accordance with management’s general or specific authorization; and (iv) the recorded accountability for assets was compared with the existing assets at reasonable intervals and appropriate action was taken with respect to any differences.” ” The Defendant is pleading guilty because it is guilty of the charges contained in the Information.”, ” The Defendant admits, agrees, and stipulates that the factual allegations set forth in the Information are true and correct, that it is responsible for the acts of its officers, directors, employees, and agents described in the Information…”The Defendant failed to voluntarily disclose the conduct even though it was aware of related misconduct at Alstom Power, Inc…”
Clearly, the US DoJ was concerned about other things than the only use of intermediary agents…
2. It is clear that the response to the Phitrust question number 2 is rather irrelevant. While Phitrust asked if the fine was related to events that occurred under the chairmanship of P. Kron, the answer should have been “YES, among others….” Instead, however, they pass on to another subject but we can conclude that the fines also covers acts of corruption produced under the chairmanship of Patrick Kron: “All the information concerning the agreement with the US Department of Justice (DOJ) is in the public domain, including the fact that they treat mostly of old projects and find, at the time, weaknesses in the internal control systems of the group. “
Finally, to stress at the meeting that Patrick Kron, who just dealt with the US Justice at the expense of shareholders, remains today accountable for its actions before teh US DoJ it, falls for us into misleading information as it is clearly partly inaccurate.
4. The quite high score on the Say We Pay the eleventh resolution, i.e. 87%, is for Proxinvest due to the concealment of the valuation of this € 4M. exceptional pay item in the summary tables. Leroy P. H. Loic Dessaint
