Following a debate on the European Commission’s proposal to amend the Shareholder Rights Directive (SRD) held on the 12th of May in Brussels, Funds Europe now draws attention to BETTER FINANCE’s concerns regarding the fees that individual investors often have to pay in order to exercise their voting rights.
BETTER FINANCE believes that European shareholders should be able to vote for free via the internet on any shares they hold with no discrimination between home and foreign domiciled shares.
As stated in the article, Guillaume Prache, Managing Director of BETTER FINANCE, considers that “in the 21st century, the cross-border voting process should be entirely digital, internet-based and open to non-bank competition as this is not a finance process. […] To this end, we believe the Commission should consider using digital registers not only for shareholder identification but especially to enable EU-wide free of cost voting by EU domiciled shareholders.”
Please read the full article here.