Corporate Governance

Since 2013, our code of conduct has described the central principles of our corporate culture. It was updated in autumn 2020 so that we can continue to meet the increased number of ethical and regulatory requirements presented by our fast-moving world. The code of conduct will therefore continue to guide our decisions and help us to prevent any misconduct. The new and additional content is based on common international standards and requirements.

The code of conduct is binding upon all employees at all CHG-MERIDIAN locations. It also sets out our expectations for how our customers, suppliers, and other business partners should behave. Acting with integrity at all levels creates trust both internally and externally and is essential to our continued commercial success.

CHG-MERIDIAN expects its employees and business partners to report attempted, suspected or actual compliance violations. Contact persons for such reports include immediate supervisors, senior management, the Group Regulatory Officer as well as an external ombudsman.

Our behavior towards one another is characterized by respect, trust, and tolerance. We therefore handle all reports of possible violations as strictly confidential. We assume that our whistle-blower system will be used responsibly and with integrity.

A report will not be classified as a breach of confidence. Such reports will not result in discriminatory action against the reporting person, provided that he or she made the report in good faith regarding the accuracy of his or her statements. The whistle-blower remains anonymous at all times unless the whistle-blower expressly permits disclosure either in advance or after the fact.

The CHG-MERIDIAN ombudsman is - in addition to the Group Regulatory Officer - the central point of contact and the anonymous authority with respect to CHG-MERIDIAN in the whistle-blower system. 

Non-disclosure agreement between CHG-MERIDIAN and the ombudsman:

• The ombudsman only handles information provided by whistle-blowers who disclose their identity to the ombudsman.
• The initial grounds for suspicion and the corresponding facts will only be transmitted to CHG-MERIDIAN in an anonymized form.
• The ombudsman is expressly forbidden to disclose the identity of the whistle-blower to CHG-MERIDIAN unless the whistle-blower expressly permits disclosure either in advance or after the fact.
• The processing of information is done in accordance with the applicable data protection requirements.
• The preferred languages for the processing of incoming e-mails are German and English. The processing of e-mails in other languages may require extra time due to the necessity of a translation.