3.5.6Auditors

The external auditor of SBM Offshore is appointed by the Annual General Meeting on proposal of the Supervisory Board. During the Annual General meeting of 2014, PricewaterhouseCoopers Accountants N.V. was appointed auditor. The current appointment is reviewed every four years by the Audit Committee. The Audit Committee advises the Supervisory Board, which communicates the results of this assessment to the Annual General Meeting. The Audit Committee and the Management Board report their dealings with the external auditor to the Supervisory Board annually and discuss the auditor’s independence.

The current lead auditor is Mr. M. de Ridder of PricewaterhouseCoopers Accountants N.V. He will be present at the Annual General Meeting 2017 and may be asked questions with regard to his statement on the fairness of the financial statements. The external auditor attends all meetings of the Audit Committee, as well as the meeting of the Supervisory Board at which the financial statements are approved. He receives the financial information and underlying reports of the quarterly figures and is given the opportunity to comment and respond to this information.

Based on auditor independence requirements, the lead auditor in charge of the SBM Offshore account is changed every five years. Pursuant to the Dutch Audit Profession Act (Wet op het accountantsberoep), the audit firm of a so-called public interest entity (such as a listed company) will have to be replaced if the audit firm performed the statutory audits of the Company for a period of ten consecutive years, at the latest in 2024.

Pursuant to the Audit Profession Act, the auditors are prohibited from providing the Company with services in the Netherlands other than ‘audit services aimed to provide reliability concerning the information supplied by the audited client for the benefit of external users of this information and also for the benefit of the Supervisory Board, as referred to in the reports mentioned.’ The Company has taken the position that no additional services may be provided by the external auditor and its global network that do not meet these requirements, unless local statutory requirements so dictate.