Ben Noteboom

Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to all of you participating today, either in person or virtually. My name is Ben Noteboom, Chair of AkzoNobel's Supervisory Board, and I will be chairing today's meeting. I hereby open this Annual General Meeting of Shareholders. Together with me on stage are Wouter Kolk, Chair of the Remuneration Committee; Ute Wolf, Deputy Chair of the Supervisory Board and Chair of the Audit Committee; Greg Poux-Guillaume, our CEO; and Maarten de Vries, our CFO; and Charlotte van Meer, our General Counsel. Also, attending this meeting are the other members of the Supervisory Board, Ester Baiget, Jaska De Bakker, Hans Van Bylen and Joachim Muller.

This meeting will be held in English, at least, I try. Questions may be asked using the microphones available in the room or via the chat box on the online voting platform. Please, if you ask questions, start by stating your name and if applicable, the name of the shareholder you are representing. To ensure an efficient meeting and to allow others to speak, please say ask two questions that always seems turns out to be impossible, so but please limit the time you're speaking. Questions not answered during the meeting will be answered on our website. We would like to remind our shareholders that the proposed merger with Axalta will be the topic of our Extraordinary General Meeting to be held in the course of this year. Related questions will be addressed at that time. Before I continue, I hand over to Charlotte, Secretary of this meeting to explain the voting procedure. Charlotte?