Measures relating to sustainability and the ESG criteria remain remarkably dynamic, and this year once again these two subjects are among the critical factors impacting commercial enterprises. Now that the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) has been transposed into national law, companies are obliged to address a sustainable corporate strategy and reporting obligations. In addition, the progress in digitalisation and the rapid advancements in the field of AI – with the new opportunities as well as challenges they entail – are highly relevant when German companies' supervisory boards are setting their agendas. Likewise, those agendas continue to be shaped by globally persistent and heightened geopolitical instability. One topic that noticeably gained in importance among German corporates is business management and monitoring mechanisms – i.e. assessing the effectiveness of internal control systems (ICS) and risk management systems (RMS).

What has this meant for supervisory boards and the work they do in concrete terms? What further topics are defining supervisory boards' agendas at present? How are these topics influencing supervisory boards' skills and expertise profiles and the criteria for their success? Which challenges and obstacles are supervisory board members currently facing in the activities they perform? Together with AdAR, the Arbeitskreis deutscher Aufsichtsrat e.V. (German Supervisory Board Working Group), we explored these and many more questions in this year's supervisory board survey.

We hope you find this reading enlightening and inspiring.