How can I check if I am a shareholder in a company?

H

Honestcon

Registered User
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I believe that I am one of 6 people who hold shares in a company, but when I looked on Solocheeck.ie, it says the company only has two shareholders. How can I find out the actual situation re shareholders without confronting the directors?
Can I do it through CRO.ie?
 
There should be a shareholders agreement in place which you would have been a party to ?
 
Honestcon said:
I believe that I am one of 6 people who hold shares in a company, but when I looked on Solocheeck.ie, it says the company only has two shareholders. How can I find out the actual situation re shareholders without confronting the directors?
Can I do it through CRO.ie?
Click to expand...

Yes
 
Honestcon said:
How can I find out the actual situation re shareholders without confronting the directors?
Click to expand...

You could always as for replacement shares certificates because you lost yours........ and see what the reaction is.
 
Torblednam, thanks for the reply. I had a good lok through CRO, but don't know what report to go for. Can you enlighten me, please. I would very much appreciate it.
 
You may still be a shareholder while not listed in on the B1 Annual filed with the CRO. The B1 lists shares in the name of the registered, or legal, owners and not necessarily the beneficial owners. It is not unusual to have shares held in someone else's name, as nominee, on behalf of someone else. A declaration of trust, a simple one page document, should be drawn up listing the beneficial owner. However this may not happen in all cases.

It may also be the case that the CRO B1 has not been updated to take account of new shareholders.

If you want you can request a copy of the beneficial ownership register which every company is meant to have. However I'd take a guess that it will cause more confusion that anything as this is a new (and pointless requirement for a small private company in my view).
 
All company information, including shareholding is available through the cro website. There are plenty of companies that provide the information gathered from the cro records that you can get information from. Give them your name and date of birth and it should tell you your history as a shareholder, director and secretary including when you ceased being any of those. People on their local property management board are on it. There's a massive amount of information provided.


Steven
[broken link removed]
 
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stevieob said:
Is that not just for directors.
pretty sire it doesn't list all share holdings transfers
Click to expand...

No, it lists all members' shareholdings, and all movements between members. Unless that has changed in the last couple of years under the new Companies Act.
 
The CRO records should contain the most up-to-date shareholders as at the date of the company's last Annual Return. When shares are sold and/or issued there are no forms to be filed in the CRO, the only notification that the CRO receives about the new shareholdings is when the next Annual Return is filed. If the CRO records do not show that you are a shareholder then this means 1 of 2 things

1. You are not a shareholder in the company
2. You are a shareholder but the annual return has not been changed to reflect this

Can you give a bit more detail about why you think you are a shareholder. There are 3 main ways in which you can become a shareholder

1. You were an original shareholder from the day that the company was formed, this seems unlikely in this situation
2. Existing shares were transferred or sold to you at some stage after the company was formed
3. The company issued brand new shares to you at some stage after the company was formed

so which category do you fall into?

In the absence of a shareholder agreement and/or a signed share transfer form and/or actual share certificates then it's going to be difficult to prove that you should be a shareholder in a company

It could be something as simple as someone in an office who was involved in the share transfers and failing to inform a colleague about this and so the Annual Return continues to be filed year after year with old info contained on it and no-one is any the wiser

Edited to add:

Shareholders should also be informed of the date & venue etc of a company's AGM every year but again just because you haven't been informed doesn't actually mean that you are NOT a shareholder. It just means that if you are a shareholder then the directors probably forgot to inform you or don't even know that they should be telling you.
 
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