Minutes of the XDISA AGM meeting, 6 December 2017
From my count there were 46 retirees present plus the 3 DuPonters, Patrick Schriber, Chris Newton and Arnold Dickers.
Agenda (1st part) items:
1.The May 2016 minutes were accepted without comment.
2. Pierre presented the President’s Report mentioning that Lars and Hans were stepping down.
3. Georges presented the Treasurer’s Report and stated that we needed an auditor for the future. Gerald Chopard offered to carry out that function and it was accepted.
4. The above reports were approved.
5. The remaining members of the old committee – Pierre, Georges, Denis, Ed, Peter Taylor and Peter Vine were re-elected.
6. Miscellaneous:
a) German K. requested that the next meeting be in Geneva and Gerard Chopard proposed it to be in the afternoon as most members were living in Geneva.;
b) Communications with all members seemed to be a problem and Georges said he would consider it and resolve the difficulties including confirming payment of fees. Those in attendance were asked to let Georges know if they hadn’t been contacted directly.
c. Denis also reminded DuPont that they had been requested to include a direct information on the Retirees Association to all retirees and that this had not been done to date.
d) Bernard Sauner raised the question on Health Insurance and the impact on retirees. The response to this was that our deal with Mutuel is relatively good, but due to enormous cost increases in health care the premiums keep going up. Only significant cost saving possible is when dropping the semi-privé option.
Agenda (2nd part) items:
Presentation on the Merger by Patrick Schriber
He described the groupings of the 3 new companies which will be independent companies eventually (by mid-2019).
The 3 companies will be: Agriculture – Called something like AGCo; Material Science a DowCo; Speciality Products a DupontCo.
The Ag part required a move of Crop Protection from Dow/DuPont to the FMC Corporation with FMC’s Nutrition and Health moving the other way for Regulatory Requirement approval of the merger.
He said he would provide a summary of the presentation for general distribution.
German K. asked how and where the pension Fund would be handled. Patrick said DuPont would honour its commitments, but the exact details hadn’t yet been finalised; the Spec. Co. looks clearly to be the logical home for the Fund.
Presentation of the status of the Pension Fund by Chris Newton.
He presented the status as of the end of October 2017 and the future plans regarding the Technical Interest Rate. He promised to provide charts for distribution.
Finally, Arnold Dickers told us the status of the work around the TPG/RAP and said that they added one person to clean up the cases, that resulted from previous different interpretations of the Policy. There has been legal counsel from both sides involvement and the interpretation are now clear, which means that pending cases can be processed. An example of such a case was mentioned by Jan Kranendonk.
Pierre closed the meeting, thanked the DuPont colleagues and invited all to the Bar for a snack and a drink.