Search for:

With the aim of pursuing its objectives of fighting money laundering and granting more transparency to market operations, on May 3rd, 2017, the Portuguese Parliament enacted Law 15/2017 on prohibiting the issuance of bearer securities.

Consequently, it is no longer possible to issue bearer securities and the current existing bearer securities will need to be converted into nominative securities until November 4th, 2017 (interim period).

If those bearer securities are not converted during the interim period: (i) same will no longer be transferable, and (ii) its holders will not be allowed to participate in the distribution of dividends.

The Government is preparing and will publish a regulation on the conversion mechanism, which publication is expected within the next 120 days.

Author

César Bessa Monteiro Jr. is an associated partner at Abreu Advogados. He has concentrated his practice in Commercial and Corporate Law, M&A, Intellectual Property Law, Information Technologies, Marketing and Telecommunications.