Euronext Corporate Services has released the results of its European survey on shareholder identification for European issuers in a report titled ‘How issuers across Europe use this untapped benefit of SRD II’.
Conducted in partnership with Proxymity, the survey follows the 2020 implementation of the Shareholders Rights Directive II (SRD II). Main trends in shareholder disclosure request practices are analysed by company profile and by country.
More than 5000 European listed companies participated in the research, with companies analysed across Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and Portugal.
The survey found a 38 per cent increase in the number of listed companies using share registers between 2021 and 2022.
A 73 per cent YoY increase was seen in the number of small and mid-sized companies classed as ‘active’ in the identification of their shareholders, rising to 474 in 2022. Among issuers, 863 were reported to be proactively identifying their shareholders.
Euronext states that the findings mark a “positive change and a new norm” in how European listed companies are structuring their corporate governance.
Mathieu Caron, head of primary markets at Euronext, comments: “This survey on shareholder identification practices highlights primarily that the SRD II directive has liberalised the use of shareholder consultation, which is critical for companies of all sizes with ambitious growth and ESG strategies.
“We welcome the successful adoption of the SRD II framework by listed companies, which improves transparency in their dialogue with final shareholders. We are now, as a consequence of the directive, able to provide more efficient data collection and management, and are seeing an increasing number of issuers choosing to use this service and are moving further with bond-holders engagement service.”
