The St. Petersburg Prosecutor's Office is seeking the transfer of approximately 0.8% of the shares of PAO Proletarsky Zavod to the state. These shares are registered to nearly 2,000 minority shareholders — mostly former employees of the enterprise who received securities during privatization in 1991.
According to Mikhail Smakovsky, the general director of the plant, most of these owners have already died without transferring their rights to the shares to their heirs. Because of this, records of them continue to remain in the shareholder register. The enterprise refers to such owners as 'dead souls'.
No one intends to take shares away from real owners. The problem is that some of the minority shareholders died long ago and did not transfer their rights to the shares by inheritance.
For the plant, this is not just a formality. The rights of registered shareholders must be taken into account when conducting corporate procedures, including preparing for meetings. A large number of minority shareholders who do not actually participate in the management of the enterprise creates an additional burden on document flow.
The subsidiary Central Research Institute of Marine Engineering is in a similar situation. There, according to the enterprise, there are about 5,000 minority shareholders, which also complicates corporate procedures.
The prosecutor's office filed a lawsuit, registered on July 21. The registrar R.O.S.T. is the defendant, while Proletarsky Zavod and United Shipbuilding Corporation are involved in the case as third parties. The substantive hearing is scheduled for October 19.