Germany: Registration Process for German Registered Shares via General Meeting Instruction Flow - Update
Note: This announcement, originally published on 2 April 2025, has been updated to amend the information under Re-Instruction (seev.004). Changes have been highlighted.
Clearstream Banking1 reminds clients about the most important aspects of mandatory General Meeting registration, as part of the General Meeting instructions process for German Registered Shares.
This registration process was implemented in November 2024 and is described in the Client Handbooks for CBL, CBF and LuxCSD and also in the Detailed Functional Specifications.
Registration process
Clearstream will reject any General Meeting instruction for German Registered Shares that do not contain either a registration request or provide the Shareholder ID as proof of a previous successful registration. The registration process is as follows.
Registration via CASCADE-RS (CBF accounts only)
The existing process to request registration directly (for instance via CASCADE-RS or MT500 messages) remains in place. If the client has previously registered via CASCADE-RS or MT500, the following requirements must be followed in the GM instruction:
- The “Securities Registration” Indicator must be set to “FALSE” or empty in the seev.004 instruction.
- The “Company Register Shareholder Identification” (Shareholder ID) must be included in “Rights Holder” section of seev.004.
- In this case, the minimum mandatory Rights Holder details (Natural Person: First Name + Surname - Legal Person: Name) as per Swift standards must be provided
- In the case of joint ownership, the Shareholder ID, if already present, should always be mentioned only in the first Rights Holder section.
Registration via Instruction (seev.004/Xact – all accounts)
Alternatively, for CBF client accounts, and in all cases for CBL/CBF-i or LuxCSD client accounts, the registration must be requested via seev.004 or the Xact Web Portal GM instruction functionality.
Registration request requirements
- To request a registration via seev.004 or Xact Web Portal, the “Securities Registration” Indicator must be set to TRUE. Additionally, the “Company Register Shareholder Identification” (Shareholder ID) must not be included in “Rights Holder” section.
- A Registration request can be sent without Participation Method or can be combined with a Vote (EVOT) or Proxy (PRXY) instruction.
- However, an Attendance (PHYS) instruction cannot be combined with the registration request, and these must be sent via two separate instructions. The first is a registration only request, the second instruction to submit the Attendance (PHYS) must be sent with the Shareholder ID and in this message the registration required flag must be set to “FALSE” or empty.
- To process the registration request, certain information about the rights holder is required. The required data is shown in the table below. This information is required to process the registration request, independent of the Beneficial Owner Disclosure indicator value (TRUE/FALSE). Missing data leads to rejection of the instruction.
- Rights holder data may not however be provided in the field “Address Line”. Instead, the individual dedicated fields must be used, meaning the address is split into several fields (Street Name, Building Number, Town Name etc.) that must be provided separately within the seev.004 or via Xact Web Portal. Please note that for all fields, special characters including accented letters must NOT be used.
Information | Natural Person | Legal Person |
Registration Request Qualifier <SctiesRegn>true</SctiesRegn | mandatory | mandatory |
Name | n/a | mandatory |
First name | mandatory | n/a |
Surname | mandatory | n/a |
Name Prefix | mandatory | n/a |
Country of Incorporation | n/a | mandatory |
Identification and Identification Type | optional | optional (LEI) |
Nationality | mandatory | n/a |
Date of Birth | mandatory | n/a |
Email Address | optional | optional |
Country | mandatory | mandatory |
Street name | mandatory | mandatory |
Building Number | mandatory | mandatory |
Post Code | mandatory | mandatory |
Town Name | mandatory | mandatory |
Address Line | must not be used for registrations | |
Alternatively, only for DE addresses, a numeric post box code in combination with a 5-digit post code and town name can be provided as an alternative to street name/building number. | ||
Registration processing
- The instruction will be processed by Clearstream Banking. Once all required shareholder details for registration are provided, it will be passed to the registrar.
- The Shareholder ID will be provided to the client (in seev.006 when reporting subscription is in place or within the Instruction Status of Xact Web Portal) once it is available and will also be included in the “Voting Instruction” for further processing.
- Clearstream Banking will always register the rights holder provided in the seev.004 or the Xact Web Portal GM instruction, as beneficial owner (Eigenbesitz) of the securities. A registration on a nominee level (Fremdbesitz) is not possible via seev.004. Clearstream does not validate the content of rights holder details in the registration process before sending to the registrar.
- Automatic registration of securities will only be processed if the client has sufficient holdings for registration. Clients are requested to check and ensure that sufficient holdings are available for registration.
- If a registration instruction on German registered shares is sent after the Clearstream Securities Registration Deadline, it is possible that the registration at the registrar will not be processed in time.
Deregistration and instruction modification
- For all share registrations processed out of a meeting instruction, Clearstream will trigger a deregistration on meeting date +1.
- Clearstream will trigger and process the deregistration for the full registered amount processed as a result of a meeting instruction. If the client has triggered a full or partial deregistration prior to the meeting date +1, the position will not be sufficient to process the deregistration triggered by Clearstream’s general meeting process. In such cases, it will be the Clearstream client’s responsibility to deregister the remaining position.
- Every amendment (via cancellation) to an instruction that has included a registration request leads to deregistration. If clients anticipate amendments to the vote close to registration deadline, it is recommended to separate the registration request from the vote instruction (both possible via seev.004 / Xact Web Portal). In this case, clients should ensure:
- Initial Vote instruction (seev.004) must include Shareholder ID;
- Instruction Cancellation (seev.005) must include reference to the initial single instruction ID and the Shareholder ID;
- Re-Instruction (seev.004) must include reference to the cancellation (Business Message ID of seev.005 in Meeting Instruction Cancellation ID), reference to the single instruction ID and the Shareholder ID.
Initial instruction (seev.004) | <SnglInstrId>AAABBB</SnglInstrId> |
Instruction Cancellation (seev.005) | <BizMsgIdr>CANC123</BizMsgIdr> <SnglInstrId>AAABBB</SnglInstrId> |
Re-Instruction (seev.004) | <InstrCxlReqId> |
Note: As for any instruction, the final responsibility to accept or reject lies with the respective Issuer Agent.
Examples
Case 1: Successful registration of natural person
<RghtsHldr>
<NtrlPrsn>
<NmAndAdr>
<NmPrfx>MIST</NmPrfx>
<FrstNm>Max</FrstNm>
<Srnm>Mustermann</Srnm>
<Adr>
<StrtNm>MUSTERSTRASSE</StrtNm>
<BldgNb>9</BldgNb>
<PstCd>63457</PstCd>
<TwnNm>KARLSRUHE </TwnNm>
<Ctry>DE</Ctry>
</Adr>
</NmAndAdr>
<Id>
<Id>DE12345678MAXMUSTER</Id>
<IdTp>
<Cd>CUST</Cd>
</IdTp>
</Id>
<Ntlty>DE</Ntlty>
<DtAndPlcOfBirth>
<BirthDt>1960-01-01</BirthDt>
<CtryOfBirth>DE</CtryOfBirth>
</DtAndPlcOfBirth>
</NtrlPrsn>
</RghtsHldr>
[…]
<SpcfcInstrReq>
<SctiesRegn>True</SctiesRegn>
</SpcfcInstrReq>
Case 2: Successful registration of legal person
<RghtsHldr>
<LglPrsn>
<NmAndAdr>
<Nm>MUSTERBANK SA</Nm>
<Adr>
<StrtNm>VIA EXAMPLO</StrtNm>
<BldgNb>8/10</BldgNb>
<PstCd>20121</PstCd>
<TwnNm>MILANO</TwnNm>
<Ctry>IT</Ctry>
</Adr>
</NmAndAdr>
<Id>
<LEI>1234567890ABCDEF</LEI>
</Id>
<CtryOfIncorprtn>IT</CtryOfIncorprtn>
</LglPrsn>
</RghtsHldr>
[…]
<SpcfcInstrReq>
<SctiesRegn>True</SctiesRegn>
</SpcfcInstrReq>
Case 3: Successful VoteWithRegistration request, Company Register Shareholder ID provided by client
<RghtsHldr>
<NtrlPrsn>
<NmAndAdr>
<FrstNm>Maxine</FrstNm>
<Srnm>Musterfrau</Srnm>
</NmAndAdr>
<Id>
<Id>1234567890</Id>
<IdTp>
<Cd>CCPT</Cd>
</IdTp>
</Id>
<Ntlty>DE</Ntlty>
<CpnyRegrShrhldrId>1234567</CpnyRegrShrhldrId>
</NtrlPrsn>
</RghtsHldr>
[…]
<SpcfcInstrReq>
<SctiesRegn>False</SctiesRegn>
</SpcfcInstrReq>
Most common rejection reasons
- Company Registration Shareholder ID is present, and Securities Registration Flag is set to “TRUE”.
- Invalid Rights Holder details and / or Missing Country of Incorporation (Legal Person). This is mandatory on any instruction for or including registration of a Legal Person.
- Invalid Rights Holder details – Missing Building Number. This is mandatory on any instruction for or including registration.
- Missing Right Holder details.
Further information
For further information, please contact the Clearstream Connectivity Helpdesk or your Relationship Manager.
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1. Clearstream Banking refers collectively to Clearstream Banking S.A., registered office at 42, avenue John F. Kennedy, L-1855 Luxembourg, and registered with the Luxembourg Trade and Companies Register under number B-9248, and Clearstream Banking AG, registered office at Mergenthalerallee 61, 65760 Eschborn, Germany and registered in Register B of the Amtsgericht Frankfurt am Main, Germany under number HRB 7500.
