The financial crisis of 2008 revealed significant deficiencies in corporate governance, partly due to insufficient shareholder engagement. To this day individual investors continue to face many obstacles in exercising their voting rights and actively engage in the governance of the companies they invest in, especially cross-border.
Currently a significant part of transferable shares in companies are managed through intermediaries due to legal or technical reasons and direct interaction between shareholders and the investee company is often costly, ineffective or impossible, particularly cross-border.
A revision of the Shareholders Rights Directive has been in the making for some time now. Finally, on 9 December 2016 the EU presidency (Malta) and the EU Parliament agreed on the final version of the new Shareholders Rights Directive (DIRECTIVE (EU) 2017/828 OF THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AND OF THE COUNCIL of 17 May 2017).
At an event hosted by MASS, the Malta Association of Small Shareholders, and BETTER FINANCE on 13 October in Malta, Joanna Sikora-Wittnebel, team leader for Corporate Governance at DG Justice at the European Commission, presented the new EU Shareholder Rights and their implementation.
Please find the presentation here.