@RumNCoke this is a very good question. My possibly naïve answer makes use of the following statement in the BAE form
“Foreign-held Share” means, subject to certain exemptions, any Share (other than a Qualifying Share) of which any Owner is a Foreigner, Foreign Corporation or Corporation under Foreign Control, has an interest.
“Foreigner” means any individual who is not a British citizen, British Dependent Territories citizen or a British Overseas citizen by virtue of the British Nationality Act 1981.
If you are a British citizen (etc) and also a national of another country you are still a British citizen. This means that the relevant shares would not be ‘Foreign-held’.
If you are intending to acquire 15% or more of BAE shares I am sure they will be happy to have tea and biscuits ready for you at the next board meeting. The tea cosy may well be coloured as a half Romanian flag and half a British flag.
Maybe we need to put trade sacntions on people listed as part of the Russian authorities/state but not anyone else.
I really don’t mind if an everyday Russian citizen whose lived here, made this their home and started a family here. I’d suspect many have gone down the dual nationality route as well.
If they want to go out and buy shares in Marks and Spencer or WH Smith first thing tomorrow morning than I’d have no objections.
Of course I can understand 100% why we wouldn’t want a Russian solo national buying shares in defence companies. No debate from me there
@bitflip what happens in the case of £BNC. As I’m not Spanish I’m a foreigner. As the Spanish don’t do tea parties, I’d opt for full seafood paella and patatas bravas .
Also I hope the board of £BA has plenty of herbal tea or Earl Grey haha.
Ok back to the serious stuff.
If you are a nominee related shareholder in any company (not limited to a British company) how would the company know you’re a 15%+ majority shareholder?
This is what the broker sorts out for you via the nominee company. The nominee company knows who the beneficial owners are. Btw, the 15% I mentioned is applicable to companies like BAE. I simplified the whole thing … there are some other percentages relevant in some particular industries: the relevant regulations for those industries refer to aggregate foreign held shares.
It has been 3 years since this request was made. When the request was made, basic orders were the only free order-type, and these orders were bundled up between different buyers - we were told that this made nationality declaration difficult. Since then, instant orders have been free for 2 years, and I assume form the bulk of the transactions. Why has there been no movement on this? Just disable basic trade functionality for these stocks if you can’t do it otherwise.
Since the Ukraine war, defence stocks like BAE and Rolls Royce may look more attractive. The relaxation of covid rules in parts of the world may make airlines more attractive - and the post-brexit EU airline ownership status should be settled. Yes, obviously there are US alternatives to these companies, but Freetrade have been courting users to move their ISAs and SIPPs to them - and forcing holders of these shares to cash out should they want to transfer is surely a point of friction.
Can we get an update on this. Is this on the roadmap? Is it a consideration for the ongoing European rollout?
Just wanted to give a quick update on the Nationality Declaration stocks and also introduce myself.
Firstly as you might have seen, from today Rolls Royce is available to invest in via Freetrade. This is the first stock added as part of our work in enabling nationality declaration stocks - and the rest should be following soon (hope to have them available within a month).
As for me - my name is James and I recently joined the Freetrade product leadership team after 5 years leading Wise Business at Wise.
More of your most requested features are on the way and hope to be checking back in with you soon on some of these - activity / tax statements, improved stock fundamentals, web and more!
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and thanks for hitting the ground running, well done to the wider product team too 