Joint shareholders
Can I have joint shareholders in Kudocs? Yes you can – very easily. You can either add the joint shareholders during the transaction (ie issue new shares to joint shareholders), or add a sole shareholder and then add details of joint holders later (via the {Edit shareholder} tool).
How do I add or edit details of joint shareholders? There are 2 ways to do this:
- you can add details of the joint shareholding as part of the relevant share transaction – ie issue or transfer shares to joint shareholders.
- you can add details of the main shareholder as part of the relevant share transaction and then add details of joint holders later (via the {Edit shareholder} tool).
When there are joint shareholders, who gets emails from Kudocs and if there is a shareholder vote in Kudocs, who votes? If there is more than one legal owner Kudocs will only communicate directly by email with the first named shareholder (ie the main stakeholder in Kudocs). They are the primary owner. However, you can use the notification recipient feature to add email addresses of joint shareholders.
The reason for this is that only the primary owner – as the “senior member” is entitled to vote on shareholder matters – s.286 Companies Act 2006.
Can I incorporate a company with joint shareholders? We do not support joint shareholdings at incorporation (either in the incorporation questionnaire, or the incorporation tool). The reason for this is that s.8(1)(b) of the Companies Act 2006 says that the subscribers agree to become members of the company and to take at least one share each. If joint subscribers take 1 share between them this breaches the requirement that no subscriber can take less than one share.
However, we have seen Companies House reject incorporations where there at enough shares to be split evenly (e.g. 2, 10, 100…) between multiple shareholders, (so s.8(1)(b) does not apply), but Companies House still objects. It is therefore simpler (and avoids undue delay with Companies House) to incorporate with sole subscribers and then deal with the joint shareholding later by:
- adding details of the other joint shareholders later – ie after incorporation – in Kudocs (see above How do I add or edit details of joint shareholders?) You are not changing the shareholdings, you are simply updating information about the subscriber by adding details of their co-shareholders who has always been a co-shareholder; or
- transfer the shares from the sole subscriber to the new joint shareholders. You can do this very easily in Kudocs.