| in '000 EUR | 2011 | 2010 |
|---|
| Audit services | 930 | 954 |
| Non-audit services | | |
| - Tax advice | 43 | 17 |
| - Legal advice | - | - |
| - Transaction consulting | - | - |
| - Other non-audit services | 17 | 1 |
| Total non-audit services | 60 | 18 |
| Total | 990 | 972 |
Audit services consist of standard audit work that needs to be performed each year in order to issue an opinion on the consolidated financial statements of the Group and to issue reports on the local statutory financial statements. It also includes services that can only be provided by the Group auditor and includes audit of prospectuses, implementation of new or revised accounting policies, and internal control review of systems.
Non-audit services include other services provided by auditors but not restricted to those that can only be provided by the auditor signing the audit report.
Supervisory instruments vis-à-vis the auditors
The Board of Directors performs its supervisory functions visà-vis the external auditors through the Audit Committee, which meets at least four times a year. The primary objective of the Audit Committee is to support the Board of Directors in monitoring the Company’s internal control, accounting principles, risk management, financial reporting and auditing.
Selection procedure: Selection of the external auditor last took place in 2002. Due to the independency criteria, only two worldwide operating audit companies were invited to submit proposals and at the end of this process KPMG was proposed based on regular business evaluation criteria such as service level, global presence and rate.
The review of the performance of the external auditors and their compensation was performed based on answers of corporate functions and audited local organizations to a set of questions. The questions focused mainly on the efficiency of the audit process, professionalism of audit staff, technical proficiency/understanding of accounting policies, adequacy of audit fees and fairness of audit approach.
