Company Share Registrar Function

All companies are required to keep various statutory registers including the register of memebrs

Maintenance of the register of members is usually outsourced by companies whose shares are traded on a public market. These markets require that trading take place using CREST and the necessary system development makes designing a standalone system by an individual company uneconomic

The register size for quoted companies tend to be numbered in the thousands and for larger share registers in the millions of members

Role

Issuance and transfer

Issuing new certificates

Crediting electronic holdings following the issue of new shares and processing share transfers, cancelling old share certificates and issuing new ceritficates

Record keeping

Keeping and recording ownership of shares

Registration

Registering changes of ownership and other documentation received in connection with the shareholding/membership

Paying agent

Distributing interest, cash, dividends or other payments to members

Tendering shares in a tender offer

Exhcnaging shares, options and warrants

Shareholder liasion

Facilitating communications between companies and their members

Sending out proxy materials

Mailing the company's annual, interim and other reports

Meeting management

Organising and running GM

Registering and verification of attendees

Vote scrutineers

Managing poll votes

Increasingly supervising the technology application for virtual and hybrid meetings

Dematerialisation

Companies whose shares are traded on a public market must enable their shares for electronic settlement

Various markets offer trading on a T+1 basis, this means that the shares must be held digitally rather in physical form as there is insufficient time to physically move share certificates from the selling broker to the share register for verification and cancellation and the new certificate to be printed and issued to the buying broker