Topic Information obligations for issuers Information on major holdings of voting rights (sections 33 – 47 of the WpHG)
Article from Issuer Guidelines published by the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority
One of the primary regulatory goals of the transparency of equity interests under securities trading law is to ensure information efficiency through the disclosure of changes in major holdings of voting rights in listed issuers.1 At the same time, this gives important indications of any pending company takeovers. Lastly, information on changes in voting rights helps preventing insider information from being abused.
For this reason, natural persons and legal entites are obliged to disclose to BaFin and to the listed issuer the holdings of their voting rights as soon as such holdings reach, exceed or fall below one of the relevant thresholds as a result of an acquisition or sale or for other reasons. The listed issuer is then required to forward the notification without undue delay to a pool of different media for dissemination across Europe, as well as to the company register that stores the data.
The chapter is divided into the following sections:
Footnotes:
- 1 Directive 2004/109/EC (Transparency Directive II), OJ L 390, page 38, Recitals 1 and 18.
