Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has signed a law on amendments to the law on joint-stock companies regarding the improvement of the mechanism for the activities of joint-stock companies, which parliament approved taking into account the president's proposals.
The law was signed on February 25, the presidential press service has reported.
In early February the Ukrainian parliament cancelled a requirement of the law on joint-stock companies, under which agreements on sale and purchase of shares in public joint-stock companies listed on stock exchanges can be signed only on the exchanges.
The lawmakers also took into account remarks from the Ukrainian president in the vetoed version of the amendments to the law and left in effect a requirement that public joint-stock companies are to undergo a listing procedure and be registered in the stock exchange register of at least one exchange.
Parliament took into account the president’s remark and cancelled a requirement that would have forced minority shareholders to sell their stakes to the owner of over 95 percent of shares in the company.
The new wording of the law sets out the procedure for making decisions on important deals (worth over 50 percent of company assets): now the approval of the owners of 50 percent plus one share is required, while earlier the approval of owners of 75 percent plus one share was required, and lawmakers proposed to relax the quorum requirement to 75 percent plus one share of the number of voting shares being registered for meetings.
In addition, parliament agreed with the president and included close relatives of officials, in companies in which the share of the official and his family members exceeds 25 percent, and shareholders with a stake over 25 percent on the list of interested persons.
"The replacement of the listing procedure with a procedure for access to trading will considerably facilitate the observation of the article by the issuers and will gradually transfer shares to the stock exchanges’ listings only through the market, and will also improve the investment base required for the development of the Ukrainian capital market," the PFTS stock exchange said.
According to an exchange press release, the amendments to the law will also create an opportunity for stock exchanges to be the common information center of the Ukrainian stock market, which would contain not only trading information, but also other information on activities of all public joint-stock companies.
As reported, the law was endorsed by the parliament on December 22, 2010, although the Ukrainian president vetoed the law and returned it to parliament with his proposals on January 12.
