The next president will not be able to appoint board members in Ecopetrol until 2025, according to article approved by the company's assembly

Until 2025, in accordance with an amendment to Ecopetrol's statutes, the next president will be prevented from appointing the new board of directors of the oil company. Initially, it was proposed to its shareholders the idea of extending the terms of office of their directors from two to four years, however, one shareholder considered it more prudent that the first period counted should be from 2021.

With this, those who are currently occupying these positions would end up in 2025 and not in March 2023, as budgeted. “I would like to propose actually keeping the board members a little longer. His management has been fantastic,” said Maura Ramírez.

The shareholder's approach was approved by 93% of the panel that voted affirmatively for this amendment. The decision would keep the board members elected in 2021, namely Cecilia María Vélez White (independent); Luis Guillermo Echeverri Velez (independent); Germán Eduardo Quintero Rojas (non-independent); Juan Emilio Posada Echeverri (independent); Sergio Restrepo Izasa (independent); Luis Santiago Perdomo Maldonado ( independent) and Esteban Piedrahita Uribe (independent).

According to what was detailed by the company, the extension of the term of the board of directors corresponds to a process that began years ago. This goes back to when, in order to meet the parameters of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Mines and Energy ceased to serve the board of directors.

“The Board of Directors of the company will be composed of nine main members without alternates, who will be elected by the General Meeting of Shareholders, by the electoral quotient system and for institutional periods of four years, and may be re-elected more than once for the same period without exceeding three terms in total,” emphasizes the document that was endorsed by those attending the decisive meeting.

It was also highlighted that the company implemented mechanisms to increase women's participation in first and second level management positions. That's taking into account their objectives of diversity and inclusion.

In addition to this decision, it should be recalled that, after obtaining positive results in 2021 (a profit of $16.7 billion), the Ordinary General Meeting of Shareholders of the oil company approved the payment of a dividend of $280 per title.

“The payment of such a high dividend, which had not been recorded for nine years, is thanks to the firm's solid financial position, as well as the robustness of its cash, adds to the very performance of the stock in the market, which has grown 44% in one year (...) These resources will go to the Nation and to the minority, and it is worth remembering that there are 254,000 shareholders of the company, some of them are pension funds,” explained Felipe Bayón, president of Ecopetrol.

With the approval of the payment of the divide by 95.61% of the shareholders who attended the Ordinary General Meeting, the Nation would be entitled to $10.2 billion and minority shareholders close to $1.3 billion. The attendees of the Assembly agreed that the payment of dividends to minority shareholders will be on April 21, 2022 in a single installment. On the contrary, with regard to the majority shareholders, payment will be made in four installments, at the latest, until September of this year.

“For exploration activities, the company allocated more than US$1.8 billion for the years 2022, 2023 and 2024, to search for new natural gas fields, both offshore (offshore) and on a continental level,” Bayón added about the company's operational future.

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