Dividend remains stable

Since 2004, Munich Re has been pursuing a more flexible dividend policy, with the payout essentially based on the result for the year and our capital requirements. Nonetheless, our aim is to pay out at least 25% of the annual result to our shareholders.

Despite the reduction in the result for 2008, the Board of Management and Supervisory Board will therefore propose an unchanged dividend of €5.50 per share at the Annual General Meeting on 22 April 2009. Altogether, this would mean a total payout to shareholders of €1.074bn. Last year’s payout was €1.124bn. The dividend will be paid on 23 April 2009, the day after the Annual General Meeting.

With a dividend yield of approximately 5.0% (in relation to the year-end share price), Munich Re shares remain an attractive equity investment, which is also included in the DivDax, a subindex of Deutsche Börse AG that features the 15 DAX companies with the highest dividend yields.

Share buy-backs continued

We are essentially still committed to our share buy-back programme but, as hitherto, will carefully review the advantages and disadvantages before implementing it further.

In the course of the 2008/2009 share buy-back programme, 8.4 million shares with a value of €942m had been repurchased by the end of December 2008. Of this total, 1.3 million shares or €149m were attributable to the put options sold in February 2008 and expiring in October 2008. By the Annual General Meeting on 22 April 2009, we intend to increase the volume as announced to €1bn.