Broadridge teams up with SLIB to launch SRD II solution for French market

By Megha Bhattacharya

Broadridge Financial Solutions today announced a collaboration with France-based software vendor SLIB in a bid to offer a joint, cross-border proxy voting solution for Shareholder Rights Directive II (SRD II) compliance, covering European shareholder meetings. The collaboration is expected to enable the distribution of meeting agendas for European shareholder meetings, as well as process and count votes from French shareholders.

According to Broadridge, the new solution will utilise its Global Proxy offering and will include an STP connection to SLIB’s Votaccess, an electronic voting platform in France, which manages in excess of 80% of CAC 40 companies’ General Meetings. The new solution has been desinged for French intermediaries, including the retail sector.

“We are delighted to partner with SLIB to help French intermediaries meet their regulatory obligations at such a vital time,” said Demi Derem, general manager of Broadridge’s International Investor Communication Solutions. “In an investor communications environment that has been dominated by heavily manual processes, this collaboration will help the French market realise significant efficiencies when it comes to vote processing across European shareholder meetings, and take the lead when it comes to compliance with SRD II.”

Broadridge stated that the solution will be fully integrated into client workflows and will be made available before the 2021 proxy season. It will allow French retail intermediaries to offer proxy voting services to shareholders where they can be notified of shareholder meetings for European companies and exercise voting rights.

“This is a landmark initiative and brings together the leading provider of global proxy solutions in Broadridge, with our unique Votaccess platform, the electronic voting solution leader in the French market,” said Philippe Cognet, CEO, SLIB. “With deep expertise and robust investor communications governance models with the main banking actors, Broadridge represents an ideal partner to bring this innovative solution to market.”

Recently, Britannia Global Markets, a brokerage house and a subsidiary of Britannia Financial Group, selected Broadridge to speed up its post-trade processing for its international securities business including cash equities, fixed income and repurchase agreements.