A corporate action is an event, agreed upon by a company’s board of directors and authorised by its shareholders, that causes material change to the company’s securities.

A mandatory corporate action is an event initiated by the board of directors of the corporation that affects all shareholders. Participation of shareholders is mandatory for these corporate actions. An example of a mandatory event would be a spin-off, where part of a company is spun-off to create a new company. If you have shares in the original company, you will receive shares of the new company whilst retaining your original investment. A voluntary corporate action is an action where the shareholders elect to participate in the action. A response is required for the corporation to process the action. A tender offer is an example of a voluntary event, where a third party wants to buy a portion of equity in your invested company. You will have the option to sell  all or part of your investment. The event could eventually become a mandatory takeover where the third-party attempts to buy the entire share capital leaving you with no option other than to sell.

You should wait for us to contact you. You will receive a secure mail through your Online Banking explaining the type of corporate action taking place and how it affects you. Certain corporate actions require you to take a decision. If this is the case, we will indicate which options are available to you and confirm the date by which your response must be received. Your instruction on what action to take must be delivered by return secure mail.

Notifications of corporate actions will be sent via secure mail through your Online Banking. You will also be sent an email alert to let you know that you have a new message to read.

No, it is free to participate in corporate actions.

Your investment is safely kept in our nominee account, which allows us to give you the lowest execution fees under our scalable business model. However, this means that we have certain restrictions on the corporate action that can be offered.  Below are some corporate actions which are currently not offered:

You can provide your instruction by sending us a return secure mail through your Online Banking. Instructions must be very clear and not be subject to interpretation.

The company’s registrar will set a deadline for security holder responses to a corporate action. Our deadline will always be set prior to the company registrar’s deadline to be able to manage and process all client instructions on time.

Our investment services are on an ‘execution-only’ basis. This means we shall not provide personal financial advice about the suitability of an account or an investment you hold within it.

If you have missed the MeDirect deadline then the default instruction option will be applied on your investment.