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Spring meeting of the SUISA Board of Directors
Directorʼs seat in a TV broadcast vehicle: SUISAʼs Board and Executive Committee are preparing to counter the renewed attack on the media fee from the trade sector and the Jungfreisinnige . (Photo: Cooler8 / Shutterstock.com)
Young Liberals, Switzerland
Report from the Board by Andreas Wegelin
The SUISA Board of Directors and its committees held their spring meetings on 11/12 April 2022. After a long break, it is back in full for the first time with face-to-face personal meetings at SUISAʼs headquarters in Zurich.

Traditionally, the annual report and the annual financial statements/accounts are finalised and approved at the spring meetings in preparation for and for the attention of the General Meeting. The 2021 annual financial statements matched the previous yearʼs level despite the ongoing pandemic in the year under review. The overall decrease in revenue in 2020 and in 2021 only amounted to 10%, compared to the best-ever result in 2019.

At the same time, we were able to achieve savings on the cost side, in particular thanks to accelerated process automation. This stabilised the decline in terms of the distributable amount. It is even 1% higher than in 2020. High secondary income also allows us to pay an additional 7% distribution on all 2022 settlements again.

Risk management

The annual report also includes the Board of Directors activities in terms of the examination of possible risks and the taking of precautionary mitigating measures to prevent such risks from materialising. Thanks to good information work and lobbying, the CT 3a Tariff (background music) has been much more widely accepted over the last three years since SUISA set up the collection. The Board no longer sees any particular risk here.

On the other hand, the attacks on the media fee from the business sector and the Young Liberals are a cause for concern: The substantial cut in funding for SRG would also have far-reaching consequences for the broadcasting of music by our members. Our Board and Executive Committee will set everything in motion in the years leading up to the referendum to ensure that this scenario does not come to pass.

Partial revision of the Articles of Association, #creatorsforUkraine

The Board also approved a partial revision of the Articles of Association for the attention of the Annual General Meeting, including rules for a good modern corporate governance. For the first time, the emoluments and potential conflicts of interest of the members of the Board of Directors and the Executive Board will also be disclosed to the 2022 Annual General Meeting.

The Board also wishes to express its concern about the war in Ukraine and condemns Russiaʼs war of aggression. It decided to make a donation of CHF 50,000 to the #creatorsforUkraine relief campaign of our umbrella organisation CISAC.

Other agenda items

Other topics of the meeting were the optimal organisation of the representation of the rights of our members in South Africa, possibly through a new agency, and the cooperation with the German GEMA regarding the automated registration of small events with music.

In its function as the Board of the Pension Fund for Authors and Publishers, the SUISA Board of Directors has taken note of the annual financial statements of said foundation, which close successfully with an annual result of CHF 4.7 million thanks to the good securities situation at the end of 2021.

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