DKN urges small shareholders to sell

By Ross Kelly

LISTED planning group DKNFinancial has asked shareholders with a small holding in the company to sell their stake in an attempt to save on administrative expenses.

DKN has in excess of 600 shareholders who hold parcels of ordinary shares worth less than $500.

The group said these shareholders hold approximately 200,000 ordinary shares and 0.4 per cent of the company’s issued capital.

According to company secretary Derek Russell, the administrative cost — including share registry, printing and mailing cost — of keeping these shareholders on board was becoming unmanageable.

“We put the proposal to members of the company last year at the general meeting in November and approved after the meeting that it was just a way of cleaning up the share register,” he said.

As an incentive to sell, the Perth-based group is covering all brokerage costs related to the sale of these shares, which can be sold on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) through a special sale facility established by DKN.

“We’ve got a fair few people stuck with a small number of shares not inclined to sell them because it would probably cost them more to sell them than they’d get back, so it’s a way of giving them a way of getting rid of their shares if they wish to,” Russell said.

“There’s no brokerage at all, so they’ll just get the net proceeds when they sell the shares. But if they don’t want to do that they can just tick a box and send it back and they will retain their existing shares.”