AUSTRIA: FMA publishes Standard Web based Form for Major Holdings notification

Wednesday April 27 2016

The Financial Market Authority of Austria (FMA), has published a standard web based form for notification of major shareholdings on their website.

The FMA has additionally made available instructions for completing the web based standard form and have requested that attention is paid to this and to the footnotes in the form.

Persons crossing a relevant threshold of holding shares, financial instruments, or other instruments related to an issuer are required to make a major shareholding notification.

Investor Notification – Web Standard Form
Persons subject to notification are required to submit the form to the FMA, the issuer and (if the securities are listed on a regulated market in the Vienna Stock Exchange) the Vienna Stock Exchange, no later than two trading days after the threshold was crossed.

Following online submission of the form to the FMA, the applicant will receive the notification as a Microsoft Word Document via email (a separate download of the notification is available after submission). Subsequently, the notification must be provided to the issuer and (where applicable) to the Vienna Stock Exchange.

Thresholds for notification in Austria
As per Section 91 para. 6 BorseG, a notification obligation arises as soon as the proportion of voting rights reaches, exceeds, or falls below a threshold of 4%, 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 35%, 40%, 45%, 50%, 75% or 90%. Issuers may voluntarily stipulate a threshold value of 3% in their Articles.

Attribution
Section 92 BorseG broadens the scope of the reporting obligations, to attribute voting rights held by a person to the person subject to notification in certain circumstances.

This includes subsidiaries, where the attribution of voting rights, are held by a directly or indirectly controlled undertaking, or similarly to those acting in concert.

Financial / Other similar Instruments
Section 91a BorseG states that financial instruments or other similar instruments related to the issuer, held directly or indirectly by persons are required to be included in the calculation of total voting rights. This includes, options, futures and contracts for difference.

Please click on the above link for the web based form.

Please see the below link for instruction relating to the web based form: 

Instructions_for_Web_Based_form