Benefits & Voting Rights

The Law requires issuers to treat depository account holders as full members of the company.

When a record date for a benefit arrives the company will take details of all account holders from CDBL and create a unified register, which will be used to distribute dividends, rights and bonus shares.

Investors who hold shares in the depository will be eligible to vote exactly as though they held share certificates. The advantage, however, of holding shares in the depository is that shares are credited to the account on settlement date and the investor is the registered owner of those shares from that date. This avoids the delay that occurs, with physical certificates, between market settlement and registration.

Companies, when they issue new shares, will be able to make arrangements so that the new shares can be issued directly into depository accounts so saving the need for the company to issue share certificates and for investors to subsequently dematerialise them.