Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority Calls for Electronic Voting and Digitizes Services in the Wake of COVID-19

Further precautionary measures are being taken by the Egyptian authorities to limit the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Following the Prime Minister’s Decree No. 606 of 2020 ordering the temporary suspension of all activities or domestic travel that would result in crowd gathering, Dr. Mohamed Omran, Head of the Financial Regulatory Authority (the “FRA”), issued a press release on the 14^th of March 2020 calling all listed companies and companies operating in non-banking financial services to commit to setting up a system for remote voting by shareholders in the General Assemblies, as well as enabling delegated voting through one of the authorized custodians or registered owners.

The step shall be through an electronic voting form shared with the attendees of the meeting, containing a checklist of the meeting agenda. Each attendee can choose either to approve the decision in the agenda, reject it, or abstain from voting.

Companies are expected to complete the above mechanism for every General Assembly at least 5 working days prior to the date of the meeting, to enable shareholders to vote on the decision in the agenda, while ensuring that all voting rights prescribed by the applicable laws are in order. On the meeting day, the final results in the voting file should be prepare and sent to the company to approve the votes and count it in the quorum.

On a related note, on the 15^th of March 2020, the FRA issued a circular explaining that the FRA’s Central Administration for Market Services shall operate electronically, so that any non-banking financial activities can be carried out via email and without the need to be physically present in the FRA.

If you have any questions regarding any of the above, please contact:

Ayman Nour
Partner, Head of Office – Egypt
Corporate Structuring
a.nour@tamimi.com