Triodos Bank Certificate Holders Foundation (SCTB) is considering requesting another inquiry procedure from the Enterprise Chamber (OK) if the sustainable bank does not take action in the short term to improve the trade in certificates. The foundation announced this this week in a newsletter to members.
SCTB will further investigate whether an arbitration case can be initiated in order to obtain compensation for the affected Triodos certificate holders. The foundation represents 3,567 holders who own almost 190 million euros in certificates. This corresponds to 15 percent of the capital placed with Triodos via certificates. Triodos itself therefore calls SCTB a “relevant discussion partner”.
SCTB also faced Triodos at the OK at the beginning of this year. Then the foundation, together with investors association VEB, demanded an investigation into mismanagement at the bank. They believed at the time that this was the case at Triodos because the bank had done too little when the internal trading system for certificates crashed in 2020 and 2021.
Until then, Triodos had facilitated the trade in certificates entirely itself, with the price being based on the book value of the bank. However, in 2020 and 2021, so many holders wanted to get rid of their certificates while there were no buyers, that Triodos could no longer maintain that system.
SCTB’s request for an investigation into mismanagement was rejected by the court in Amsterdam. An investigation into past board actions would not have been in the interests of the certificate holders at that time. “They are particularly interested in a successful listing of the certificates on an external trading platform,” the Enterprise Chamber said in the ruling. That external trading platform started last summer, but according to SCTB it can certainly not be called successful. According to board member of the foundation Fons van der Velden, the trading system is developing “dramatically”.
From 84 euros to less than 25 euros
Few certificates are passed from hand to hand during each trading round, which takes place once a week. The price paid to holders who do manage to sell is low. While approximately 84 euros were paid for halting trade in 2020, the price has amounted to less than 25 euros in recent weeks. The foundation also believes that the threshold for private certificate holders to register with the trading platform (operated by Captin) is too high and the procedure for subsequently selling is too unclear. The foundation says it hears many stories from certificate holders who are experiencing problems because they cannot get rid of their investment at a reasonable price.
SCTB requested clarification from the Triodos board quite soon after opening the trading platform. After many conversations and exchanges of letters, the foundation’s board has come to the conclusion that there is no point in continuing discussions. The foundation now wants an external evaluation of the trading platform as soon as possible and that Triodos is already investigating an alternative, regardless of the outcome of that investigation.
If Triodos does not respond satisfactorily, SCTB believes there may be room for a new case before the Enterprise Chamber. In their rejection in March of this year, the OK counselors were already very critical of the actions of the Triodos board and the supervisory board between 2017 and 2020. The OK wrote that it did not understand why the Triodos board only in 2020, when trading was halted and took action to solve the problems, while it already realized in 2017 that there were problems with certificate trading. The Supervisory Board would not have insisted on this either.
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