February 19, 2019

What goes into the shareholder registry of your Australian company?

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What goes into the shareholder register of your Australian company?

Updated: 7 December 2019

A register is a record of certain company information that must be kept to meet Corporations Act 2001 requirements.

In this article we are looking at the requirements for companies with under 50 shareholders and companies that are not on the stock exchange.

Shareholder registry contents

Now, section 169 of the Corporations Act 2001 states the register information to keep for each shareholder, namely: 

  • Name and address of shareholders; and 
  • Date that the entry for the shareholder was made on the register; and
  • Transfers of shares (per section 1071D Corporations Act 2001); and 
  • Shares not held beneficially; and
  • Joint shareholders - meaning 2 or more people that hold shares in the company, those 2 people are taken to be one shareholder.

Other information kept in the registry

Former shareholders 

These are the details of former shareholders that you'll need to keep and you can keep these separate to the rest of your register.

  • Name and details of each person no longer a shareholder of the company within the last 7 years; and
  • Date the person stopped being a shareholder.
Crowd sourced funding offers (CSF)

If your private company has made crowd sourced funding offers, your shareholder register must include: 

  • The date every issue of shares were made for each CSF offer; 
  • Number of shares for each CSF offer; 
  • Shares for each CSF offer; and 
  • The date an entity stops being a CSF shareholder of the company for a particular share in the company.






About the author 

Vivian Michael

As founder and lawyer at Michael Law Group, Vivian advises Australia's top entrepreneurs on business and employment matters. Clients benefit from Vivian's commercially focussed and pragmatic legal advice, business experience, and commitment to deliver the best quality business legal services to her clients.

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