Dematerialisation

Austin Review of Capital Raising and Dematerialisation

This article represents the views of its author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. It’s the mid-summer doldrums in the stock market and with investors having more time on their hands, what better time to issue a 265 page document entitled “UK Secondary Capital Raising Review” (see link below). This document covers a number of very important issues to investors after a review by Mark Austin as Chair of a committee that has looked at the way the UK stock market operates ...

Scrapping Share Certificates and Clive Sinclair Obituary

This article represents the views of its author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc The Government is to push ahead with the scrapping of paper share certificates. An announcement yesterday by Lord Frost included this in a bonfire of regulations which also included plans to scrap driving licences (i.e. making them digital only). The dematerialisation of shares was long ago committed to by an EU directive with no new paper certificates to be issued by 2023 and all existing ones replaced by ...

Dematerialisation of Shares – Certificates to be Abolished

There are in excess of 10 million investors who hold their shares in paper certificated form. So today's announcement by the Government is of interest. Lord Frost set out the below points about getting rid of paper share certificates today as part of a Brexit regulatory review. Dematerialisation of shares - Although the majority of shares are held in electronic form, a minority are held in paper form. It is more expensive and takes longer for holders of paper shares to trade them and there is ...

Law Commission Review of Intermediated Securities

The Law Commission has published a “scoping paper” on Intermediated Securities (See Reference 1 below). This might sound a pretty dry technical subject but the subtitle of the report asks the important question – it covers “Who Owns Your Shares?” I have written about the problem of the growth in the use of nominee accounts as on-line platforms have replaced share certificates many times in the past. ShareSoc has a web page with voluminous information on this subject including reports written by ...

Who Caused the Stock Market Collapse? And consequences.

Who or what caused the stock market falls immediately after the Brexit vote? It was not just the UK market that fell, but many international ones plus of course the pound fell very significantly - to its lowest level since 1985. It was somewhat unexpected that the impact would be so immediate. The UK stock market has recovered to a large extent in the large cap stocks, many of which will benefit from the lower pound and a move to more "defensive" ...

Letter in the FT regarding dematerialised share registration system

 A ShareSoc Member, Michael Coulson, had a letter published in the Financial Times this morning. It points out that there is a tried and tested electronic share registration system called CHESS already in use in Australia. It provides direct share registration for shareholders in a dematerialised form. Mr Coulson suggests it be adopted in the UK rather than have a lengthy and uncertain process of developing a similar system. See http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1498a2e4-c58a-11e3-97e4-00144feabdc0.html?siteedition=uk#axzz2zcRDWr9t It would surely be a better system than the prevalent use ...

FT article on dematerialisation

The Financial Times published a long article by Jonathan Eley entitled “What price shareholder democracy?” on Saturday. It was in the FTMoney supplement and covered the issue of nominee accounts, dematerialisation and prospective EU legislation. Mr Eley covered most of the issues well but here’s a note I have sent him to explain a few points.Dear Jonathan,Regarding your article at the weekend on shareholder democracy and nominee accounts, which was generally very sound, a few points:1. Not all listed companies like ...