On August 15, 2019 the Russian President issued Decree No. 388, establishing a special record-keeping regime for ownership rights over the securities of particular issuers.

 According to Decree No. 388, if a person who holds more than 1% of the issuer’s voting shares requests information about other shareholders from the registrar, the registrar provides such information excluding the information on sanctioned Russian shareholders, if any.  This would apply only if the issuer has notified the registrar about the existence of such sanctioned shareholders.  The registrar, in its turn, is required to submit the information on such sanctioned shareholders to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation within 2 business days after receipt of the notification from the issuer.

 Earlier this year the Russian Government adopted Decree No. 400 establishing cases when securities issuers may not fully disclose certain information that is normally subject to mandatory disclosure requirements.  For instance, this would apply if the issuer is a sanctioned person or if such disclosure of information about a sanctioned person would or would be likely to result in the imposition of sanctions against the issuer, or any third parties, or the sanctioned person. The list of information that may not be fully disclosed includes, among others, shareholding and management information, information on affiliated persons, information on the issuer’s subsidiaries, etc.  As a result, corporate reports of many Russian legal entities and open databases no longer contain information about sanctioned shareholders and/or managers of such legal entities.