On the 12h of January 2017, BETTER FINANCE sent out an open letter to the Slovenian government and to the European Commission’s DG for Financial Stability, Financial Services and Capital Markets Union in support of VZMD. The open letter denounced the amendment of the Financial Instruments Act ( ZTFI-G) which would have damaged the interest of individual shareholders.
The proposed amendment would have jeopardized the ability of VZMD to further act as an advocate and custodian of legitimate interest of minority shareholder and individual investors. VZMD acts to mitigate the harsh consequences stemming from the elimination of free registry securities accounts of minority shareholders, providing small shareholders with the only way to avoid the wiping out of their small shareholdings by intermediaries’ fees in just a few years’ time.
In its open letter, BETTER FINANCE warned that the proposed amendment would have infringed on Regulation EU 909/2014 on improving securities settlement in the European Union and on central securities depositories which provides, in its article 38, that after 17 September 2014 no additional restrictions of omnibus client accounts may be adopted by Member States. The amendment was aimed at limiting the ability of independent and non-profit shareholders’ associations to procure for the attorney omnibus accounts.