<The Board of Directors’ role and competences:
The Board of Directors is the Company's supreme administrative body, which is exclusively responsible for determining the Company’s strategy and its growth and development policy. Key duties of the Board of Directors are to seek to support the long-term financial value of the Company, to defend the Company's interests in general and those of shareholders, to ensure that the Company and Group comply with the laws, to bolster transparency, corporate values and the Company’s Code of Conduct in all Group operations and activities, to ensure the effective operation of the Company’s audit mechanisms, and to monitor and resolve conflicts of interest issues between members of the Board of Directors, managers and shareholders, and the interests of the Company and Group and to check the performance of the Chairman of the Board of Directors, the CEO, and the senior executives.
The Board of Directors is exclusively responsible for taking decisions on important issues such as: approval of the Company's financial statements to be submitted to the General Meeting; approval of the annual budget; increases in Company share capital in cases where that is specified by law or the Articles of Association; issuing corporate bonds, in parallel with the competence of the General Meeting and subject to the provisions of Articles 8 and 9 of Law 3156/2003; convening the General Meeting of Shareholders; making recommendations on issues to the General Meeting; preparing the annual management report and other reports required by the relevant legislation; appointing the company’s internal auditors and appointing the Company's legal representatives and special representatives and agents.
Moreover, the Board of Directors is responsible for determining the pay and other remuneration of the CEO and other senior executives of the Company and Group, for recommending for vote by the General Meeting stock options programs for executive members of the Board of Directors and staff of the Company and related companies etc.
The duties of the Chairman of the Board and those of the CEO are performed by different persons, and their powers and competences are discrete and expressly set out in the Company’s Articles of Association and the Company’s Internal Regulation, as in force following the recent revision approved by the Board of Directors at its meeting on 17 December 2009.
According to the Company’s Articles of Association and with the exception of cases like those above where a decision of the Board of Directors is required, the Board of Directors is entitled to issue a decision transferring and assigning its management and representation powers to one or more members of the Board of Directors or to Company managers or executives. Moreover, it may also transfer its powers to the Executive Committee. The scope of that Committee and how it operates are described below.
After the decision taken by the General Meeting of Shareholders on 8 June 2012, the members of the Board of Directors hold third party civil liability insurance with Chartis Europe Limited as duly represented by Chartis Hellas S.A.