A company’s members have the right to access certain information about the company and they also have the power to call upon the directors of the company to produce certain information.
#Share Register
For starters, as the member of a company, you are entitled to inspect its share register without charge. This will usually be held at the company’s registered office. It contains the name and address of each member, the numbers of shares they hold, which class of shares they hold and any amount of money paid and unpaid on those shares.
A company has seven days to provide a copy of the share register after you request a copy. If you are not a member of the company, fees apply for inspecting or gaining a copy of a company’s share register.
Australian company law does prohibit the use of share register information for what it considers to be “improper purposes”.
For example, you can’t use member details found on a share register to ask that member for a donation. Stockbrokers must not access share register information with the aim of recruiting new clients. Anyone accessing the information on a share register cannot use that information to make ‘unsolicited’ offers to purchase a member’s shares ‘off market’.
#Constitution
A copy of a company’s constitution must also be made available to a member within seven days of you making a written request. You may have to pay a fee to receive a copy. These fees are set out in Sch 4 of the Corporations Regulations.
#Report requests
Members who have at least 5% of the votes in a small company limited by guarantee or a small proprietary company can also direct the company to prepare a financial report and a directors’ report for a financial year (provided it is not more than 12 months after the end of the financial year in question). They can also ask for these reports to be sent to all members of the company.
The members giving such a direction must sign it before it needs to be carried out by the company. They can also specify whether or not the financial report needs to comply with certain accounting standards and whether or not it needs to be audited. They can also specify whether a certain part of the report or a directors’ report doesn’t need to be prepared as part of the request.
#Minutes
A member can inspect the minutes or written record of members’ meetings and resolutions at the company’s registered office (or its principal place of business) for free. A fee may be charged if the member wants a copy of minutes.
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