The London Stock Exchange has responded to the European Commission's second consultation on fostering an appropriate regime for shareholders' rights.
The key points of our response are:
- We believe that the proposed scope is correct: the directive should only apply to EU-incorporated companies that are admitted to trading on a regulated market (and UCITS should be excluded);
- We support the move away from trying to secure a legal definition of the ‘ultimate investor’;
- We support proposals to prohibit share blocking and to replace this with a ‘record date’ system – as operated in the UK;
- We question whether it is necessary to include proposals on stock lending in a directive, or to leave this to a Code of conduct or market-led solutions;
- We believe that notice periods should be set at 20 business days for Annual General Meetings and 10 business days for other General Meetings, and that information relevant to these meeting should be sent out at the same time;
- We believe that issuers should be able to request the identity of a client that holds shares in their company via an intermediary;
- Where information is to be provided on a website, we believe that proposals should allow for market-led solutions to develop by allowing issuer’s the flexibility to either publish this on their own website, or to provide it to a third party.