Amendments to the Bearer Share Certificates Provided under the Law No. 7262

With the Act No 7262, pronounced in the Official Gazette on the last day of the year, important changes were made in the Turkish Commercial Code besides the other arrangements made by considering harmonization with the recommendation decisions of Financial Action Task Force (FATF). One of the amendments to the TCC is respectively, the board of management’s and assignee shareholder’s obligation to notify the Central Securities Depository in the case of issuance and transfer of a bearer share certificate. Hence bearer share certificates will be recorded at a central system and it will be possible to keep the track of shareholders. In principle, although the amendments seem to be compatible with the FATF Recommendations, both the administrative fines that will be imposed in case of failure to notify and potential problems during the application of these rules may bring hesitation to achieve the purpose of the amendments. In this study, the principles that the bearer and registered shares of a stock company will be subject to and the consequences of breach of notification obligation are discussed after the amendments to the TCC by the Act No. 7262 are explained.