About 250 Belgian investors in Triodos want the sustainable bank to buy back their certificates after years of problems with trading in those securities. That’s what ‘De Tijd’ wrote on Saturday.
In recent years, Triodos has raised 1.2 billion euros by having investors subscribe to certificates that entitle them to a dividend. About 43,500 shareholders have Triodos certificates in their portfolio, including 8,000 Belgians.
Certificate holders could buy or sell the securities at book value, with Triodos acting as an intermediary and trying to maintain a stable price. But when the pandemic broke out three years ago, there was such a big wave of sales that Triodos decided to halt trading and develop a new trading system. The shareholders could not get their money for about three years. A new trading system was only introduced last summer.
Disappointing results
This did not yield much for the certificate holders. This week the price of a Triodos certificate reached 30 euros. That is more than 60 percent less than when trading was halted in 2020. Many shareholders are therefore asking that Triodos revise the trading system again to enable smoother trading and avoid significant price fluctuations.
About 250 Belgian shareholders, gathered under the name Trioforum, are therefore going to the Brussels commercial court to demand that Triodos buy back the certificates at their original book value. According to Trioforum, it fluctuates around 90 euros.
Destruction
According to lawyer Laurent Arnauts, Triodos subsequently unilaterally and fundamentally adjusted the properties of its certificates. “If the bank does not buy back the certificates, we believe it is guilty of abuse of rights. Then she only introduced the decision of the new trading system to harm the certificate holder,” says Arnauts. If the judge does not agree with that reasoning, the lawyer will request that the sale of the certificates be annulled.
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