AxiomSL, a global provider of regulatory reporting and risk management solutions, has announced it would provide a new shareholding disclosure service using content from online legal services provider aosphere, an affiliate of international legal practice Allen & Overy.

aosphere provides AxiomSL with detailed legal memoranda and alerts on changes to shareholder disclosures legislation, which will form part of AxiomSL’s strengthened offering to financial firms worldwide, including Africa-based asset managers.

Gaurav Chandra, Global Product Owner SD, AxiomSL EMEA, said: “Regulators around the globe such as the Capital Markets Authority Kenya (CMA) and Takeover Regulator Panel (TRP) in South Africa require all market participants to make disclosures when they accumulate a substantial shareholding in an entity, invest in a protected industry, become involved in a takeover bid or engage in short selling.”

“AxiomSL’s one platform solution leverages legal up-to-date regulatory content provided by aosphere, an affiliate of Allen & Overy, which has been designed to manage the intricacy of the rules alongside varying jurisdictions to remain both complaint and transparent,” he told Africa Global Funds.

The challenges facing market participants are made more complicated by ongoing changes to regulatory requirements.

This means that, firms must continually track changes to the shareholding disclosure requirements – as well as all other regulations.

The AxiomSL platform will utilize aoesphere’s Rulefinder, which will update the rules for shareholding disclosure requirements in 87 jurisdictions.

“Our solution encompasses the complex capacities, exemptions and netting rules allowing market participants to identify genuine disclosure obligations through the rule sets, calculations and reporting functionality, greatly reducing the cost and complexity of compliance involved in managing disclosure related activities,” Chandra said.

The AxiomSL shareholding disclosure solution aggregates a group’s total shareholdings for a particular issuer in individual entities and compares these amounts with the total issued share capital or voting rights for that issuer, depending on the jurisdiction.

The solution then monitors if the group has accumulated a substantial shareholding or if the percentage shareholding has breached any regulatory thresholds, and therefore may be obliged to report the disclosure event.

The solution covers monitoring and reporting for substantial holding, short-selling, take-over and industry limits.

The solution features a monthly release cycle to proactively manage regulation and reporting changes with full transparency.

Ed Royan, COO EMEA, AxiomSL, said: “AxiomSL offers a single platform for all regulatory reporting, not just shareholding disclosures. We are reducing the risk and regulatory burden on our clients by providing a single platform that can be used to comply with multiple regulations globally.”