At last week's FlatexDegiro Annual General Meeting, new members were elected to the supervisory board, and Hans-Hermann Lotter was elected as Chairman. The other new supervisory board members are Martina Ulrike Pfeifer-Braks, and Sarna Marie Elisabeth Röser (Management Board member at Röser FAM with digital expertise).

Stefan Müller and Bernd Förtsch, who sit on the supervisory board on behalf of major shareholder Börsenmedien GmbH, were reappointed. While the three independent new supervisory board members have been appointed for three years, Förtsch and Müller had previously agreed to a term limit until spring 2029. This means that the terms of office on the supervisory board are structured in such a way that they do not converge on a common expiry date – Lotter's term of office is initially set at three years. Müller, as interim chairman of the supervisory board, chaired the virtual meeting, which was attended by 55.49% of shareholders.

A peculiarity had already emerged in advance of the vote on the discharge of former CEO Frank Niehage: the Management Board and Supervisory Board had recommended to shareholders that Niehage, who was in office until the end of April, should not be discharged, which is rare – such an initiative usually comes from the Supervisory Board alone. With Förtsch at the helm, the Supervisory Board was already dissatisfied with Niehage's performance last year. This was a view shared by many shareholders at last year's shareholders' meeting, where Niehage was not granted discharge with 50.89% voting against. Among other things, Niehage was accused of a lack of initiative in developing the core business and the weak performance of the share price. On Monday, he was again denied discharge with 57.85% of the votes.

Lotter, who was elected with 90.89% of the votes, succeeds Martin Korbmacher, the long-standing head of the supervisory board at FlatexDegiro, who was also in dispute with Förtsch and resigned prematurely in March. The 60-year-old Lotter brings a considerable amount of experience from the financial sector and also holds other supervisory board mandates. He worked for Deutsche Bank, Lazard and Rothschild for many years, and now represents the private equity firm Advent on several supervisory boards, including at Aareal Bank, where he is deputy chairman of the supervisory board. Pfeifer-Braks has also worked for Advent.

The free float criticised the meagre dividend in particular, calling for a corridor of 40% to 60%. The current dividend is 4%. In addition, the shareholder representatives would like future annual general meetings to be held in person again, for which CEO Oliver Behrens expressed a certain degree of sympathy, but did not want to make any commitments.

In the question and answer session, Behrens explained that FlatexDegiro is well equipped to seize opportunities in a growing market, which is, however, fragmented nationally and therefore still needs to consolidate.