KDPW, the Central Securities Depository of Poland, has launched new solutions facilitating communication between public companies and their shareholders in line with the requirements of the second Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD II).
SRD II, which went live today, aims to encourage shareholder engagement, increasing transparency and improving corporate governance.
The scope of modifications relating to the implementation of the new regulations focuses on two areas.
The first includes the modification of the scope of information transmitted by companies to KDPW and subsequently transmitted by KDPW to its direct participants, enabling shareholders to exercise their rights attached to shares such as notifications of general meeting and other corporate actions.
The other area is the transmission of shareholder details to companies.
Regarding general meetings, KDPW said the functional scope of the online application used by issuers of shares to process general meetings will be modified to a large extent.
The application will support the transmission of general meeting notices, notifications of the participation of shareholders in general meetings, as well as vote recording and counting confirmations.
For events other than general meetings, companies that are unable to distribute corporate action notifications regarding shares directly to all their shareholders are required by the European regulations to notify intermediaries that maintain shareholders’ securities accounts of such events immediately but no later than the same business day.
In the case of public companies established in Poland, KDPW is the intermediary and it will distribute such information to its direct participants who will forward it to shareholders.
Meanwhile, a new online application “Shareholder Identification” is now available from KDPW to issuers.
KDPW explained the application supports the disclosure of shareholder identification details to companies, including the number of shares.
Shareholders’ personal data may only be processed for the purposes of public companies’ identification of their shareholders, direct communication with the shareholders, and facilitation of the exercise of their rights and engagement in the company’s affairs.
Elsewhere, the new solutions follow from amendments to SRD II which authorise public companies to identify their shareholders and require intermediaries to co-operate in the process.
