The Florange Law in France: doubling of voting rights

In 2014, France brought the Florange Law into effect. The Florange law has the effect of automatically doubling one’s voting rights of a French issuer’s shares when they are held for two years or more.

Some companies may have opted out of the Florange Law by indicating so in their articles of association.

The Florange Law presents a unique challenge in Shareholding Disclosure, as the number of voting rights per share affects the percentage of holdings in the EU jurisdictions under the Transparency Directive (Amended).

FundApps solves this challenge by automatically doubling the voting rights for positions (assets) of French companies that clients have flagged as being held for two years or more.

Such positions can be identified in the position file by separating the number of shares held for two or more years into their own asset/position and declaring “true” for the property IsFlorangeApplicable. Other conditions should be checked before declaring this property; see the description and notes for IsFlorangeApplicable in the Property menu or the FundApps data spec. If IsFlorangeApplicable is undeclared or set to false, the Florange Law does not apply to the position.