U.S.-based fintech Broadridge Financial Solutions announced on Tuesday it has joined forces with SLIB, a software vendor in electronic voting and security services based in France, to offer a joint, cross-border proxy voting solution for Shareholder Rights Directive II (SRD II) compliance, covering European shareholder meetings.
According to Broadridge, the fully automated, end-to-end solution was designed specifically fo French intermediaries, including the retail sector. The solution will also use Broadridge’s Global Proxy solution and includes STP connection to SLIB’s Votaccess®, the leading electronic voting platform in France, which manages in excess of 80% of CAC 40 companies’ General Meetings.
“This Broadridge-SLIB alliance will enable the distribution of meeting agendas for European shareholder meetings, as well as process and count votes from French shareholders in a seamless service, unique to the French market.”
Speaking about the collaboration and solution, Demi Derem, General Manager of Broadridge’s International Investor Communication Solutions, stated:
“In an investor communications environment that has been dominated by heavily manual processes, this collaboration will help the French market realise significant efficiencies when it comes to vote processing across European shareholder meetings, and take the lead when it comes to compliance with SRD II.”
Broadridge further revealed that the solution will for the first time allow French retail intermediaries to offer proactive proxy voting services to shareholders where they can be notified of shareholder meetings for European companies and exercise voting rights “seamlessly.” SRD II went live last fall and is global in its scope, impacting any financial intermediary that holds or services European equities, irrespective of where the intermediary firm is located. It applies to all types of financial intermediaries, including banks and brokers, wealth managers and central securities depositaries (CSDs).
