Oslo Børs Informasjon AS (OBI) and Manamind AS will launch a new product on 1 January 2006 providing details of the 20 largest shareholders in listed and unlisted companies (Top20).
Oslo Børs Informasjon AS and Manamind AS are subsidiaries of Oslo Børs and VPS (the Norwegian Central Securities Depository) respectively. Through their collaboration on this new product, Oslo Børs will become the first stock exchange in Europe to make this information readily available to market participants around the world. From the start of 2006, it is planned that all subscribers to the "Real-time information for professionals" service from Oslo Børs will have access to Top20 information through their information distributor. Top20 will be updated every Wednesday morning, and take into account all trades registered through VPS up to the preceding Friday.
Top20 will not only cover virtually all the companies listed on Oslo Børs, but will also provide shareholder information for companies in the top tier of the Norwegian OTC market. However, access to this information will depend on whether the distributor of market data from Oslo Børs used by the investor chooses to include it.
"Information on the main shareholders in a company is very important for everyone considering buying or selling the company's shares. Through this collaboration with OBI we will open yet another channel for this information, and we believe that this will be of great use for both investors and companies", comments Hugo Sundkjer, Managing Director of Manamind.
"We have found that investors, both in Norway and internationally, are very interested in shareholder information and we are extremely pleased that we will now be able to meet this need. Making this information more readily available will help to strengthen our position as one of the most open and transparent security markets in the world", adds Oddleif Hatlem, Managing Director of OBI.