Annual Report 2010/11 - Sonova

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InfOrMATIOn POLICy
As a publicly listed company, the Sonova Group pursues an
open and active information policy. A governing principle
of this policy is to treat all stakeholders alike and to inform
them at the same time. It is our aim to inform our shareholders,
employees, and business partners in the most
direct, open, and transparent way possible about our
strategy, our global activities, and the current state of the
company. An investigation carried out by the law firm
Homburger confirmed, among other things, breaches of
the ad-hoc publication requirement in financial year
2010/2011. In response to this finding, the Board of Directors
created a task force to establish improved internal
processes and ensure compliance with them in order to
prevent these failings occurring again.
All publications are made available to all shareholders, the
media and the stock exchange at the same time. All shareholders
entered in the share register automatically receive
an invitation to the General Shareholders’ Meeting and
to order a copy of the Annual report of Sonova Holding AG.
The financial report is drawn up in line with International
financial reporting Standards (IfrS).
The website of the Sonova Group also contains information
on the company results, as well as current investor presentations.
The Investor relations Program covers presentations
of annual and interim results, presentations
on the latest product launches, meetings with investors
and analysts in major financial centers, visits to the
research & Development department and Production at
Stäfa (Switzerland), and presentations at broker-sponsored
industry conferences.
InSIDEr TrADInG POLICy
In order to prevent insiders from benefiting from confidential
information, the Board of Directors has issued guidelines
on how to deter corporate insiders from making use of
confidential information. The Board of Directors has established
blocking periods to prevent insiders from trading in
shares and options of Sonova Holding AG during sensitive
phases. According to the Articles of Association, the decision
to implement such a black-out period lies jointly with
the CEO and CfO. As part of the investigation by the law
firm Homburger, a failure was also detected in the runup
to the profit warning with regard to the black-out period.
The Task force deployed has also taken on this issue.