Overview
Although the Sensitive Industries (SI) service covers substantial holder obligations related to industries with special significance, some jurisdictions have shareholding obligations that apply to all companies in that jurisdiction, known as "blanket restrictions." These obligations are organized by our legal information provider, aosphere, in the “Sensitive Industries” section of their memoranda and are sometimes referred to as “foreign direct investment” obligations.
Rule Sets
There are six rules designed to monitor these blanket restrictions across all relevant countries. These rules are divided into two sets:
One set checks the issuer’s country of incorporation.
The other set checks the relevant security’s country of primary listing.
If a position has the same country for both incorporation and primary listing, only one alert will be generated to avoid duplication. Each set of three rules corresponds to:
Pre-approval obligations
Hard stop obligations
Threshold disclosure obligations
Entity Domicile
These rules also differentiate based on the top-level entity’s domicile, which should be provided in the portfolio file using the Domicile property.
The rules identify if the entity's domicile is considered "foreign" to the jurisdiction in question. This includes:
A standard definition of foreign entities (those not domiciled in the jurisdiction)
“Non-EEA” entities, as commonly found in EEA based regulations.
All investors (in some cases)
Value Sets
Three main Value Sets referenced by the rules serve to house the lists of countries and their associated thresholds or limits:
SensitiveIndustriesBlanketRestrictionsPA: Pre-approval obligations
SensitiveIndustriesBlanketRestrictionsHS: Hard stop obligations
SensitiveIndustriesBlanketRestrictionsTD: Threshold disclosure obligations
These Value Sets ensure the accurate application of the rules across different jurisdictions.