2011 Annual General Meeting. The OHL Group closed 2010 with very satisfactory results in a context of a difficult crisis

Obrascon Huarte Lain held its 2011 Annual General Meeting of Stockholders on May 23rd. Juan-Miguel Villar Mir, Chairman of the OHL Group, supported by the board of directors, presented the financial statements for 2010 , a year in which , he noted, “the group had a very satisfactory year, without doubt, the best ever, despite the difficult economic conditions that Spain is going through.”

Juan-Miguel Villar Mir stressed that OHL is well positioned to meet the challenges of the crisis thanks to the strategy announced and being implemented since 2002; a strategy that has enabled the Group to anticipate the current situation and draw on the growing internationalization and diversification, while always applying strict financial security.

As a result, OHL is now more of a concessions group than a construction group, and more international than national, and has, since 2002, maintained “steady growth” in its main economic parameters: sales, EBITDA, net profit and backlog; parameters which have been growing at an average of over 20% over the 2002 to 2010 period.

The concessions activity has established itself as the main area of the Group, “the leading generator of EBITDA and second in total sales,” the OHL Chairman specified. And, after launching the Group’s commitment to concessions in 2001, “by 2010 we ranked seventh in the world ranking of private infrastructure developers published by the prestigious magazine PWF and are the top private investor in transport infrastructure in Latin America”, he highlighted.

The investment drive of the concessions division and the effort to access international markets have resulted in a significant presence abroad. Currently, the Group’s activities are carried out in 29 countries on five continents.

With regard to stock market performance, the market has recognized, explained the OHL Group Chairman, “the wise policy of OHL, its consolidated strategy and its ability to achieve its targets.” Thus, the market value of OHL from December 31, 2002 through May 20, 2011 has grown at a cumulative annual rate of 24.5%, sharply outperforming the Ibex-35 Index, which over the same period has risen by 6.7 %. The average gain for construction companies, meanwhile, without OHL did not reach 6%.

As important milestones of the year, Mr. Villar Mir highlighted the OHL Mexico IPO on November 11, 2010. He said: “This is the biggest operation in last 10 years in our industry in Mexico and elsewhere and was also the third largest operation in the past five years worldwide in the field of transport infrastructure.”

Regarding Corporate Governance, he highlighted the adoption of a code of ethics applicable throughout the OHL, which ensures the same corporate culture is applied in all areas of the business in Spain and other countries.

At year end, the OHL Board of Directors decided to raise the functions and monitoring of CSR policy to the Audit and Compliance Committee of the Board, which will now be known as the Audit, Compliance and Corporate Social Responsibility Committee “as evidence of our determination to make progress in improving corporate governance and the integration of the sustainability of the business”, declared the Chairman.

Future prospects

The OHL Chairman highlighted the Group’s intention to continue in coming years with the implementation of the strategy that “has allowed us to reap such good results.”

Thus, OHL Concessions, which is already a financially independent division, “will continue to be the focus of investment efforts.” While the Construction Division, “will focus on Spain, Central Europe, the U.S. and Canada, Mexico, Brazil, Peru and Chile.”

Regarding this division, the OHL Chairman recalled that, in order to optimize the use of human and technical resources across the Group’s construction activity, it has been decided to merge the International and National Construction divisions into a single Construction division.

Juan-Miguel Villar Mir concluded by thanking the shareholders for their confidence in the management carried out by the Board of Directors of the Group; a confidence that has made the success of the company in recent years possible.