Adding a shareholder

Overview

Creating a shareholder record is short, but two of its steps carry consequences that only appear later. This lesson walks the whole flow and slows down at those two.

What you'll learn

• The one precondition

• How to create a shareholder, for either type

• Why the associated-companies step is the most common correction

• What the invite decision does, and when to say no

Before you start

A company must exist first. The Shareholders page says so directly: to involve a new shareholder in your project, you must have created at least one company.

That is a real ordering constraint rather than a nicety — a shareholder is assigned to companies, so there has to be one to assign them to.

Decide beforehand whether this shareholder is a natural person or a legal entity. If it is an entity, have the details of the person who acts for it to hand.

Steps

1. In the project navigation, open Shareholders. On the shareholders table, select Actions, then Add Shareholder.

2. Add a shareholder and choose the shareholder type — natural person or legal entity.

3. Identity Info — for an individual, their personal details; for an entity, the company's legal identity.

4. Contact Information — the authorised individual empowered to act for this shareholder. For an individual that is themselves; for an entity it is their legal representative.

5. Associated Companies — select every company in this LBO in which they will hold.

6. Decide Invite to create an account?

7. Save.

They then appear in the project shareholder list, and in the shareholder list of each company you assigned them to. Same record, seen from two places.

Associated companies: the step to slow down for

A shareholder can be assigned to several companies, and on a build-up they usually are. A participant subscribing across three ManCos is one record with three assignments.

This is the most common correction, and it fails silently. Assign only the first company and the record looks complete — the consequence appears later, when the shareholder is absent from a subscription process scoped to a company they were never assigned to.

So assign every company where they will hold, not just the first.

Invite to create an account?

An explicit choice at creation, and the platform's control principle appearing at the earliest possible point: you decide whether this person is contacted.

Invite when they will complete their own KYC, sign, or pay — anything requiring platform access.

Do not invite when you are recording a holding for completeness, when the check will be handled internally, or when the relationship runs through a partner and you do not want the platform contacting them.

You are not locked in either way. Checks and processes have their own invitations later. This decides only whether they hear from the platform now.

Common problems

The page tells you to create a company first. Exactly what it says. Create the company, then return.

They do not appear where you expected. Almost always the associated-companies step. Open the shareholder and check the assignment.

You created a duplicate. One person is one record with several company assignments, not one record per company. Two records for the same person means their history is split.

An entity's contact details are the entity's, not a person's. The contact must be the human empowered to act — an entity has no inbox.

You are adding many shareholders. Use the bulk import instead.

Related

• A4.1 — Individuals vs legal entities · choosing the type, and why it matters

• A4.5 — Shareholder bulk import: preparing your file · when there are many

• A4.7 — Correcting shareholder data · fixing an assignment afterwards

• A1.6 — Nothing is sent without you · the principle behind the invite decision