AXA Group

In the 2007 ranking for the best general meetings held by CAC 40* companies, the AXA Group came in third, behind Air Liquide and Lafarge. This bronze medal was awarded to Laure Thibaud, the Group head of communications and sustainable development, on July 6 in Paris.
Drawn up by Capitalcom, the European corporate and financial communications agency, the awards for the best general meeting of the year for CAC 40 businesses are intended to encourage and strengthen companies' relationships with their shareholders, while getting them on board for their industrial projects.

Under the responsibility of five partners - the newspaper La Tribune, Radio Classique, the international audit firm Deloitte, the international corporate law firm Norton Rose, and Capitalcom - they reward the company whose annual general meeting reflects the best practices in place based on a review of more than 150 criteria defined beforehand (quality of exchanges with shareholders, organization, quality of speeches, pedagogical dimension, accessibility of financial information, presentation of the corporate governance system, etc.).

The panel of experts for the 2007 awards, made up of 20 members including Lindsay Owen-Jones, Chairman of the Board at L'Oréal (winning company in 2006), unanimously voted to give first place to Air Liquide, with Lafarge coming in second and AXA third. The jury's special award went to Danone.

As far as AXA's shareholders' meeting is concerned, the panel particularly appreciated:

• The time spent explaining how its executives operate and are paid, with a fully transparent approach
• The motivating speech on the objectives for Ambition 2012
• The tracking of commitment and satisfaction indicators for stakeholders (employees, clients and shareholders)
• The excellent explanations given on the business model, with particularly clear slides

* The CAC 40 is the Paris stock exchange's flagship index, made up of the top 40 French capitalizations.