Focus of the Audit Committee’s activities in 2024, Discussion of Interim Statements and Interim Reports

The Audit Committee is intensively involved in the audit process of the financial statements, including the evaluation of audit quality. The Audit Committee discussed the focus, procedure and results of the audit of the Annual and Consolidated Financial Statements of NORMA Group SE with the auditors and prepared the resolutions of the Supervisory Board. In addition, the Audit Committee decided on certain permissible non-audit services to be provided by the auditors. The Audit Committee monitored the effectiveness of the internal control system, the risk management system and the internal auditing system as well as the compliance management system. Furthermore, it decided on the audit plan for internal auditing. The Audit Committee discussed the upcoming interim statements and reports with the Management Board. In the past fiscal year, the Audit Committee also addressed the CSRD and the EU Taxonomy, cybersecurity, a refinancing concept, liquidity planning for 2024, the budget for 2025 and medium-term planning.

In 2024, seven meetings of the Audit Committee were held, some of them in person and some of them virtually. Denise Koopmans was unable to attend one meeting; all other meetings were attended by all members. Further details can be found in the table MEETING ATTENDANCE 2024.

Besides CFO Annette Stieve, who attended all Audit Committee meetings, senior executives from Accounting and Reporting, Treasury, Investor Relations & Corporate Responsibility, Internal Audit and Risk Management in particular also made presentations to the Audit Committee.

In addition to the Audit Committee meetings, regular face-to-face and telephone consultations took place between the Committee Chairman/Chairwoman and the auditors (in part without the Management Board present) and with CFO Annette Stieve.

KPMG’s lead audit partner and audit manager attended three Audit Committee meetings.