Flagging Notifications

The obligation to notify major shareholdings and proportions of voting rights (flagging obligation) applies to listed companies’ shareholders, persons comparable to a shareholder and the listed company itself.

The purpose of the flagging obligation is to provide investors with equal opportunities to receive information on a listed company’s structure of ownership, voting rights and changes therein. This information may have a material influence on the value of the shares of the listed company.

A flagging notification is made whenever one’s proportion of holdings or votes in any listed company reaches, exceeds or falls below a flagging threshold. The thresholds are 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%, 25%, 30%, 50%, 2/3 and 90% of the number of voting rights or shares in a company.

A flagging notification must be made without undue delay, but no later than the next trading day after the shareholder has learned or should have learned of a transaction leading to the breach of a flagging threshold.