Voting from abroad - problems?!, page-41

Hi

As I mentioned in one of my early posts. I don’t know the system in AUS but here in Switzerland we hold the shares in our own account/custody account in my name with a bank. The bank can also be the broker and/or the custodian. We are always informed by our banks directly and normally never directly by a company for CR’s, Mergers etc.. We don’t use HIN or SRN. The bank informs us about the company event (we call it “corporate action”) and than we gave the bank the instruction how to vote in our name. The bank/broker/custodian passes this information forward. Don’t know if it has also to do with the Swiss bank secrecy that we have the bank in a middle function. That’s the way how it works here. So we never deal with companies directly or vote via Atomic etc.

The special thing in this case is, that for the first time (I never, never had this situation, also not with other AUS shares) the banks did not inform us proactively about the voting and so did not give us the possibility to vote. As I heard from a family member (and on HC also from Ravanelli) the banks told them that the acquisition is mandatory and we just would receive the cash as soon as available… who gave the banks in a first instance this wrong (SWIFT) information that they did not start a proper “please vote corporate action”?

As I said, my friends and I work or worked for Swiss banks and we all can’t understand what’s going on…
Really strange…

BTW: TK was so nice and wrote me (after my second request) back from the RAP IR-e-Mail-address asking me to contact my bank/broker/custodian if I don’t hold the shares directly and so don’t have a HIN/SRN… we in Switzerland as explained don’t hold the shares directly.

So well I’m turning in circle… and with the time difference now it’s quite game over for my/our voting…

I have to sleep now… it’s 1.44am

Cheers, Tony