ATM | associacao de investidores

Comunicação recebida da Confederação (EUROSHAREHOLDERS)

For two years now there has been a study going on with the help of the European Commission and led by EUROPEANISSUERS regarding the direct link between issuers and shareholders that currently happens too much and too often via intermediaries who are not there to represent shareholders’ interests.

The context is te be seen in the light of what UNIDROIT ( Explanatory report to the draft convention on substantive rules regarding intermediated securities ) had proposed in its convention on intermediated securities. UNIDROIT is a private organization that studied the matter of what happens to shareholders if their bank goes bust where they put their shares.

The vision, if we can speak of a vision, of the European Commission is that intermediaries such as depositories can talk and act as the legal representatives of the end shareholder. It did not come to their mind, unfortunately,
 That our members shareholders associations and Euroshareholders who has legal status could very well be the partner in dialogue between issuers and shareholders, certainly since shareholders give our organizations proxies.

The Commission is still at the stage of not deciding who really is the shareholder and too often is happy with a dialogue between issuers and banks or depositories/custodians and one side and issuers at the other side. We know how poorly investment funds are acting in favor of shareholders and we should voice the opinion that we represent shareholders, not intermediaries.
We saw in Vienna last Monday how Michael Knap and Willy Rasinger could by ask the right questions obtain reliable and useful information in the interest of the shareholders. This is the way to have a dialogue, not via intermediaries of intermediaries but with the proxy holders of the shareholders.

The study is going on and the working party is led by Mrs Dorien FRANSENS, secretary general of European Issuers (a.i.s.b.l., the same status as ours) as explained in “Market standards for general meetings, working paper for submission to the market participants”.

European Issuers want to know whom they talk to. They do not wish to talk to intermediaries, depositories and other funds that do not really represent end shareholders. We should support them and let it be known to the Commission. The European issuers will develop in this sense a code of conduct, a kind of market standards document favoring direct relationship between issuers and shareholders. This is a concrete project that we actively follow up and wish to discuss in Ljubljana.

Issuers do not want top waste their time discussing with uninterested intermediaries and wish to reach shareholders wherever they are. We suggested working with us!

This is a crucial moment to obtain more impact for shareholders as wanted by issuers. The Commission has unfortunately completely overlooked our existence while we are official and have this status in Brussels as in most national jurisdictions as official shareholders’ organizations.

The issuers want to talk to us, not to intermediaries. We should take advantage of their wishes and needs and show ourselves as interested parties! Some intermediaries want to prevent this direct dialogue.

Jean-Pierre Paelinck
May 9th, 2008

Euroshareholders

Caros consócios,

No seguimento do caso do Banco Northern Rock, contamos com a colaboração da nossa congénere no Reino Unido, a UK Shareholders Association (UKSA) que nos fez chegar o seguinte update.

Northern Rock Shareholders Action Group - Update No. 28

Last week a committee of the House of Commons, and the Lords, debated the Northern Rock Compensation Order. This is the regulation which will be used by the UK Government to establish the value of compensation to be offered to shareholders - it can be seen on the internet at: www.opsi.gov.uk

We asked our supporters to contact their members of Parliament to express their concerns on the terms of this Compensation Order and thanks to the many who did. We also made direct representations to the committee members.

In general terms the view of most politicians in these debates (from all political parties) seemed to be that the Government was right to restrict the compensation payable to shareholders, primarily on the principle that taxpayers should not be paying more, and that most shareholders were short term speculators anyway. Of course the latter was not true but unfortunately this is an allegation that has been repeatedly made in the press. There seemed to be little sympathy for the rights of shareholders, or the morality of expropriating their property without fair compensation. Even the Conservative politicians seemed to concentrate on raising technical points about the issue rather than attacking the Government’s actions directly, presumably in fear that they would seen as supporting a bail out of those “hedge funds” who had holdings in Northern Rock. This is of course a reference to SRM and RAB, and regrettably “hedge funds” are regularly demonised in the media for various reasons.

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Caros consócios,

Em face de alguns pedidos sobre a situação do Banco Northern Rock, solicitamos a colaboração da nossa congénere no Reino Unido, a UK Shareholders Association (UKSA) que regularmente nos tem feito chegar informações sobre o processo que envolve este banco e o governo britânico.

Sempre que oportuno informaremos os nossos associados sobre novos desenvolvimentos.

Para já disponibilizamos a última informação obtida por parte da UKSA.

Legal Action Being Pursued

As I said in the previous note that we issued (all past notes are on the Northern Rock page of our web site at: www.uksa.org.uk/NorthernRock, we are continuing to look into the legal issues with a view to challenging the Government so as to obtain fair compensation.

Although the Government is setting up an independent valuation of the shares which have been confiscated from you, they have set the terms of reference so that you will not get a fair and unbiased figure. Because of the terms of reference, the answer will almost certainly be very little of nothing, when Northern Rock was in essence a valuable business that will soon recover from its difficulties.

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DIR-CI-2008.02

Caros consócios,

Este é um momento adverso em que os investidores se encontram nervosos devido às perdas substancias que, na sua maioria, registam nas suas carteiras. Não é por isso estranho que o número de reclamações que temos recebido por alegadas manipulações de mercado tenha aumentado nos últimos tempos.

Justifica-se por isso uma nossa comunicação, pouco habitual, sobre a situação actual dos mercados:

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