Economic Crime (Transparency and Enforcement) Bill — House of Lords, 2022-03-14
Topic: Domestic Commerce
Martin Callanan (Conservative, Centre-right): I think it refers to rights of control—the actual percentage shareholding of the company—but if I am incorrect on that, I will certainly write to the noble Lord When the PSC regime was in development, significant analysis, including consultation, considered the question of thresholds. The threshold of more than 25% reflects the level of control a person needs in voting rights, under UK company law, to be able to block special resolutions of a company. It was considered that 25% represented the optimum opportunity to understand who is in a position to exert significant influence and control over a company. Collecting information on legal ownership below that threshold would be much less likely to do this. Removing the threshold altogether would have the effect of essentially creating a register of shareholders rather than a register of beneficial ownership, which—I hope noble Lords will agree—is not appropriate for the purposes of the Bill and the transparency involved in this register. Maybe the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, likes going through thousands of register entries, but I am not sure it would be helpful to most people For entirely legitimate entities, there could be hundreds or thousands of shareholders. For instance, think of a large foreign company that owns property in the UK. I am really not sure whether it would be tremendously helpful to have literally thousands of individual shareholders on the list of a property’s beneficial owners. For example, in the case of public limited companies with highly dispersed ownership, where shares can be bought and sold frequently and instantly, removing the 25% threshold would make the requirements of the register disproportionately difficult to comply with, as entities must first send a notice to those that they believe are their beneficial owners, and then allow time for potential beneficial owners to respond We are mindful of the risk that an individual wishing to disguise their beneficial ownership might, for example, deliberately reduce their shareholding. We have considered this, and so have made provision that means that anyone, regardless of their shareholding or voting rights, who exerts or has the right to exert significant influence or control over an entity is captured within the meaning of "beneficial owner". This includes anyone who holds the right to appoint or remove a majority of the board’s directors. Perhaps that takes account of the point the noble Lord made earlier I am sorry that the noble Baroness, Lady Chapman, cannot be with us today. I thank her and other noble Lords for Amendments 23 and 24. In particular, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Vaux, for his engagement and for the points he has made. I am very happy to meet the noble Lord to discuss these matters further These amendments would require overseas entities to update the register not just annually but when there has been a change in beneficial ownership. I know this matter has been exercising a number of noble Lords. It was also raised in 2018, during pre-legislative scrutiny of the then draft registration of overseas entities Bill. At the time, the scrutiny committee accepted fully in its report that this requirement would be difficult to enforce without active investigation. This would also create great uncertainty for third parties transacting with the overseas entities. This is the key reason why we have adopted the 12-month threshold A change in beneficial ownership is not necessarily foreseeable and would not be knowable to any third parties, including Companies House, without detailed investigation. As I said, there are about 30,000 of these overseas entities. As such, a requirement for an overseas entity to update its information when there is such a change means that, at any point in time, it could be compliant one moment and then not compliant the next. Our problem is that we think this creates significant legal uncertainty for any third parties engaging with the entity and seeking to purchase the property from it.