The Capital Return Date

The following is a verbatim copy of paragraph five from FAR’s Quarterly under the heading of Corporate on page four:-
“The company contemplates making an application to the Australian Taxation Office for a Class Ruling seeking advice to the effect that the capital return is not assessable to Australian resident shareholders holding their shares on capital account. It is proposed to put the capital return to shareholders for their approval at a general meeting of shareholders, as is mandated by legislative requirements. This will contain precise timing and other details”

There is nothing else in the Quarterly which addresses the question of when the capital return will be paid and whether it will or may be back dated to some record date prior to the proposed resolution being put to shareholders. In the absence of any such suggestion I can’t see why holders think that it might be backdated or prior to the shareholders meeting. The reason that the company has not mentioned the date is that it has yet to set it or the meeting date.

I have a very recent experience with a capital return that AVG has just recently completed (on 21 July 2021) and the record date for the capital return was 5 July 2021, some five days after the general meeting held on 30 June 2021 to pass the resolution approving the capital return. There was a timetable provided by AVG setting out the relevant dates which you can check out in their announcement to the market dated 24 May 2021 so stop fretting or theorizing about the record date as it will be after the general meeting of members. It makes no sense for it to be before the meeting!