The proposed reform is aimed at opening securities custody to competition in line with the EU regulation on central securities depositories (CSDs). These are the registries that hold securities in the form of certificates or book entries.

The point is to make share ownership more easily transferrable when shares change hands. The problem is one of transparency, which the UJF says would suffer under the proposed new arrangement.

With the current Finnish CSD system the shares of Finnish companies are identifiable and the information is publically available. The multi-tiered system proposed would, the UJF points out, conceal information on shareholdings that are administered via foreign banks.

The UJF points out that while many Finnish shareholdings are probably already concealed in foreign administrative registers, the proposed deregulation of the national system would raise the secrecy threshold of shareholdings and undermine their being in the public domain.  

The union also points out that while the Ministry of Finance depicts the change of law at national level as a compulsory measure following the entry into force of the EU regulation, the Ministry of Justice has stressed that this is not the case.

Contact:

• Valtteri Aaltonen, UJF lawyer
• 050 525 8252 / valtteri.aaltonen (at) journalistiliitto.fi