17. Personnel expenses

Personnel expenses can be broken down as follows:

Wages and salaries shown in personnel expenses include expenses relating to restructurings and severance payments of €245 million (2014/15: €163 million). Variable remuneration based on the EBITaC metric declined from €124 million in financial year 2014/15 to €77 million in financial year 2014/16. Wages and salaries also include expenses for share-based payments totalling €28 million (2014/15: €7 million).

In Germany, 22,484 beneficiaries of post-employment benefits plans were offered to switch future benefits from post-employment benefits plans into a one-time capital payout. 7,552 beneficiaries made use of this offer. This resulted in income of €42 million.

Annual average number of group employees:

This includes an absolute number of 59,693 (2014/15: 60,341) part-time employees. The number of employees working outside of Germany stood at 135,349 (2014/15: 142,497).