DENMARK: Public register for Denmark major shareholdings to go live June 2015

Monday December 22 2014

The Danish Central Securities Depository, VP Securities, has announced that it has started accepting registration of shareholdings for the public shareholding register, which will go live on 15 June 2015.

The establishment of a publicly accessible register of beneficial owners was one of the new elements of the Companies Act, adopted in May 2009.

With the establishment of the register, the shareholders owning a significant holding of 5% or more in a limited liability company must be recorded under a publicly accessible register. Reports shall be made by the issuing company as soon as possible after the company has received notices of shareholdings (major shareholder announcements). Registration in the shareholders register is made at www.virk.dk. The beneficial ownership, as it stands at. Dec. 14, 2014, must be registered in the shareholders register by 15 June 2015, when it opens to the public. If there is a change in ownership after December 14, this must be regularly reported (within 2 weeks of the change).

The registration shall be conducted in the new register by issuing companies when they receive the following notification of significant shareholdings:

• Shareholder reaching or exceeding the 5% threshold of voting rights or share capital ownership in the company;
• Change in previously notified shareholding causing the 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 50%, 90% or 100% thresholds and the thresholds of one-third or two-thirds of the voting rights / share capital are reached or no longer reached.

According to the Companies Act, a company is obliged to file major shareholder announcements in the Company`s register (§ 56 paragraph. 1, para. 2). This obligation shall continue even when the Public Owner Register is established.

Click on the above link for more details (in Danish).