BT 2016 Annual Report Download - page 149

Overview The Strategic Report Governance Financial statements Additional information
155
We set out the 21 resolutions to be proposed at the 2016 AGM
on 13 July, together with explanatory notes, in the separate
Notice of meeting 2016 which we send to all shareholders who
have requested shareholder documents by post. We notify all
shareholders of the publication of these documents, which we
send out in the most cost‑eective way. We aim to give as much
notice of our AGM aspossible and at least 21 clear days’ notice, as
required by our Articles of Association. In practice, we send these
documents to shareholders more than 20 working days before
the AGM. (For other general meetings this should be at least 14
working days in advance).
We will propose at the AGM resolutions to re‑appoint
PricewaterhouseCoopers as BT’s auditors and to authorise the
directors to agree their remuneration.
Authority to purchase shares
The authority given at last year’s AGM, held on 15 July 2015,
for BT to purchase in the market 837m of its shares, representing
10% of the issued share capital, expires on 13 July 2016.
Shareholders will be asked to give a similar authority at the 2016
AGM.
During 2015/16, 46m shares of 5p each were purchased under
this authority (0.46% of the share capital) for a consideration of
£210m, at an average price of £4.57 per share. During 2015/16,
39m treasury shares were transferred to meet BT’s obligations
under our employee share plans. At 29 April 2016, we held a
total of 6.9m shares as treasury shares. All of those shares were
purchased in an on‑market buy back programme from May 2015
to March 2016.
In addition, the BT Group Employee Share Ownership Trust
purchased 22m BT shares for a total consideration of £103m, of
which 16.6m shares continued to be held in the Trust at 29 April
2016.
Cross reference to the Strategic Report
As permitted by the Companies Act, we have chosen to include in
the Strategic Report the following information (required by law
to be included in the Report of the Directors):
• the final dividend proposed by the Board (page 95);
• an indication of likely future developments in the business of
the company (see the Strategic Report on pages 19 to 108);
• an indication of our R&D activities (page 36);
• information about our people (page 31); and
• information about greenhouse gas emissions (page 44).
By order of the Board
Dan Fitz
Group General Counsel & Company Secretary
4 May 2016
Contact information for shareholders,
institutional investors and industry
analysts is on page 263
263