Mr. Jany, Clariant has significantly reshaped itself. How do you keep your investors informed about the details?

Patrick Jany Indeed, we have changed over the past years into a resilient company. During this process, we have kept an extensive dialogue with our shareholders and communicate on the highest possible level of transparency.

Sounds good, but how do you practically handle this at Clariant?

Patrick Jany First of all, we are treating all shareholders equally, whether they are private holders or large institutional players. Secondly, we have to know and understand the language of the financial players, the information details they request. Clariant’s vision is to be one of the leading specialty chemicals companies in the world. That also means we need to have the aspiration to offer the best-in-class investor relations support.

How are you as CFO involved in this process?

Patrick Jany Maintaining a transparent and open dialog with our shareholders is important for Clariant’s top management. This means that management, especially CEO and CFO, do spend a substantial amount of time in dialog with the financial markets.

Can you quantify this?

Patrick Jany In 2015, Clariant led well over 100 individual and group conversations with investors and analysts within the scope of international presentation trips, so-called roadshows. I was directly involved in about two-thirds of these meetings. Currently, 20 financial analysts cover Clariant with detailed recommendations and stock reports. Mr. Kottmann and myself often speak to them directly, hold conference calls at reporting dates and participate in capital market days such as the North American round table for capital market participants and journalists which Clariant staged in San Francisco in August 2015.

Is there anything specific you offer for private shareholders?

Patrick Jany We ensure that we communicate equally to all our shareholders. This is being done for example by means of media releases, presentations, etc. However, one of the most important dates for private investors of Clariant is our Annual General Meeting that we hold in March/April each year.