At the company's annual shareholders' meeting a few days ago,...

At the company's annual shareholders' meeting a few days ago, Kasper Rorsted, chief executive at the Adidas Group, reiterated that the company anticipates a “normalization” of its growth this year, after two years of strong double-digit sales expansion. As reported earlier, the group's sales growth slowed down in Western Europe in the first quarter but Adidas is targeting a global sales increase of about 10 percent this year, with net income of more than €1.6 billion. Rorsted appeared unconcerned about potential tariffs for Chinese-made footwear in the U.S. market. He told shareholders that the group's footwear production has been shifting to Vietnam, which accounted for about 44 percent of the sourced volume in 2017, up from 31 percent in 2012. In the same interval, footwear production from China declined from 30 percent to 19 percent. Rorsted would not rule out a continuation of this trend, but he emphasized that China was and will remain an important sourcing market for Adidas anyway. While summarizing the group's performance, Rorsted made a point of emphasizing its investments in the development of female leadership. In the last three years, female representation on the first management level below the executive board increased by 7 percentage points to 18 percent, and at the second level it increased by three percentage points to 29 percent. A new compensation system applying from 2018 links long-term remuneration of the group's executives to the development of the Adidas share price. Under a proposal approved at the AGM, at least 80 percent of the executive board's variable compensation is directly linked to its sales and earnings targets. Rorsted added that Adidas is investing a triple-digit million euro sum to expand its head office in Herzogenaurach. A new office building is set to open next spring that will provide workplaces for 2,000 people, and the company is completing a new event center and restaurant building.