2. REVISION LITERARIA
2.4 DESCRIPCIÓN BOTÁNICA
2.1.1 Issuer Services
IssuerInformationCenter.Austria
OeKB developed a system for the central storage of regulated issuer information, the Issuer Information Center, for issuers whose securities are listed on a regulated market. The core functions of the Issuer Information Center include the electronic receipt, storage, and provision of access to, regulated infor-mation. As well, at the issuer’s request, the Issuer Information Center passes regulated and voluntary information on to specified recipients on an automa-ted basis (for instance, the Vienna Stock Exchange and the Austrian Financial Market Authority). In 2011, a total of 142 issuers used the Portal and sent about 2,350 notifications.
IssuerInformationCenter.Austria (http://issuer-info.oekb.at)is a centralised Internet platform for required and voluntary disclosures by issuers to investors in Austria and other countries. It is acces-sible free of charge to the public and to market participants.
AGM Services
OeKB is a provider of all the processes involved in the preparation and execution of annual general meetings.
Large, intermediate and small AGMs of companies in various industries are conducted successfully and smoothly. In AGM registrations, OeKB aims to raise the bar with high standards of data security and integrity.
On the day of the general meeting itself, OeKB, working in partnership with the worldwide leader in AGM services, offers straight through processing of the data from the registration process, attendance check, advanced vote counting technology, state-of-the-art voting methods and stage communications and a backoffice online chat facility with database management. All features and components of the service are scaleable and modular, and are tailored to the size and requirements of the particular AGM.
For issuers, banks, proxies and other capital market participants involved in AGM processes, OeKB's AGM Services deliver infrastructure solutions that are efficient, customised and future-proof.
With its broad offering of capital market services, OeKB is a hub for numerous processes required in the financial markets before and after the purchase or sale of securities. For decades now, these services have benefited financial services providers, issuers, investors and the Republic of Austria.
OeKB continually updates and upgrades its capital market “logistics” services. The financial market actors are thus always supported to the latest technical and legal standards.
OeKB is the agent for the issuance of bonds of the Republic of Austria at auction. The bond auctions are conducted through ADAS (Austrian Direct Auction System), the automated electronic auction system developed by OeKB.
For 2011 the Austrian Federal Financing Agency had indicated its financing requirement as EUR 22 billion to EUR 25 billion, a decrease from the year before.
Ten auctions with a combined issuance of EUR 13.2 billion were held. Additionally, a total of EUR 4.2 billion was issued through syndicates in January and September.
For 2012 the Federal Financing Agency estimates the financing requirement at EUR 27 billion to EUR 30 billion. As in 2011, monthly auctions are scheduled for 2012.
2.1.2 Organisation and administration of domestic bond issues
3.650% Bundesanleihe 2011-2022/1/144A 4,000,000
First reopening 693,922
Second reopening 770,000
Third reopening 880,000
Fourth reopening 894,540
3.200% Bundesanleihe 2010-2017/1/144A
Second reopening 935,000
Third reopening 880,000
Fourth reopening 660,000
Fifth reopening 660,000
4.850% Bundesanleihe 2009–2026/2/144A
Sixth reopening 660,000
4.150% Bundesanleihe 2007–2037/1/144A
Eighth reopening 740,804
Ninth reopening 880,000
Tenth reopening 724,969
Eleventh reopening 200,000
Twelfth reopening 440,000
3.500% Bundesanleihe 2006–2021/1/144A
Ninth reopening 719,262
4.000% Bundesanleihe 2006-2016/2/144A
Fifth reopening 556,818
3.500% Bundesanleihe 2005-2015/2/144A
Tenth reopening 660,000
Eleventh reopening 660,000
3.800% Bundesanleihe 2003-2013/2/144A
Eighth reopening 790,097
Nominal value in EUR thousand Austrian federal government bonds
issued in 2011 Principal paying agent
As a principal paying agent, OeKB was responsible for 338 classes of securities of Austrian issuers in 2011.
OeKB acts in this capacity for the payment of principal and interest on domestic bond issues of the Republic of Austria. It also handled the redemptions of 42 other bond issues that had already matured.
MERCUR
OeKB has the mandate from the Federal Ministry of Justice for managing and publishing MERCUR, a gazette for information under the Act on the Cancel-lation of Lost or Stolen Securities (“Kraftloserklärungs-gesetz”). In 2011 this involved the management of 299 securities classes.
2.1.3 Notification office under the Capital Markets Act
In 1992, under the Capital Markets Act, OeKB became Austria’s official notification office.
Prospectus repository
The notification office acts as the filing destination and database for prospectuses prepared in compli-ance with the Capital Markets Act, the Investment Fund Act and Real Estate Investment Fund Act; it also maintains a calendar (required by the Capital Markets Act) of planned new issues of securities and invest-ments. The related reports received are published daily on the Internet without stating the names of prospective issuers. In 2011 the notification office processed about 800,000 reports for the new-issue calendar. The repository database currently contains approximately 30,500 prospectuses (including prospectus supplements/amendments) filed under the Capital Markets Act, Investment Fund Act and Real Estate Investment Fund Act.
Legal information system
When the Capital Markets Act entered into force, the Federal Ministry of Finance and OeKB (in its role as the notification office) set up a legal information system to facilitate the application of the Act. Legal opinions on stock exchange and capital markets law obtained from the legal information system continue to be forwarded by the notification office to interested parties, provided that the Ministry of Finance pub-lished them in abstract form.
The notification office also answers inquiries regarding compliance with the formal disclosure requirements under the Capital Markets Act, Invest-ment Funds Act and Real Estate InvestInvest-ment Funds Act. It supplies copies of the prospectuses filed and informs the Federal Ministry of Finance, the Financial Market Authority and the Austrian central bank of trends observed in the capital market.
As of 1 September 2011, with the coming into effect of the Investment Fund Act of 2011, the functions of the notification office were adjusted in line with the new requirements for the electronic filing and storage of fund prospectuses.
2.1.4 Financial Data Services
As part of its key functions in the Austrian capital market, OeKB offers comprehensive financial data ser-vices. In addition to master and transaction data on domestic and foreign securities, OeKB calculates and publishes data for domestic and foreign funds, fixed income securities and investment performance results of pension funds.
ISIN Services
As the National Numbering Agency (NNA), OeKB on request assigns an International Securities Identifi-cation Number (ISIN) to a financial instrument.
The ISIN allows each financial instrument to be uniquely identified worldwide, something that is of fundamental importance to all capital market partici-pants. The ISIN consists of the country prefix “AT”, a nine-character core of digits and letters that can be chosen by the issuer, and a check digit.
The ISINs are distributed by OeKB in accordance with ISO standard 6166 and are available at www.profit-web.atin the ISIN directory. At year-end the ISIN services were being used by 1,375 issuers. In 2011 OeKB issued 23,191 ISINs, of which 16,404 were for derivatives traded on the Vienna exchange of the CEE Stock Exchange Group (CEESEG). A total of 26,659 active ISINs were searchable in the ISIN directory at the end of 2011.
Since November, a new Internet application enables ISINs to be requested online. Automated requests can be placed through an XML interface.
Securities master data and transaction data OeKB maintains databases for Austrian and inter-national securities and other investment vehicles.
The data is entered by OeKB after careful research, and its up-to-dateness and accuracy are verified by a standardised quality assurance process. Four hundred and fifty data fields specify every Austrian security.
Seven hundred fields are available for foreign issues.
To enable automated processing of the data on custo-mer systems, OeKB provides customised export files.
The export files are made to specification based on a list of desired attributes relating either to individual ISINs or to the customer’s total portfolio. The custo-mer ordering the data also chooses its format and the transmission medium. Thus, for instance, registered customers can also download master and transaction data from the Internet (www.profitweb.at).
Price and rate data
For valuation purposes, OeKB provides the following content through data feeds:
■ Prices of securities traded on the Vienna Stock Exchange (CEESEG)
■ Prices of unlisted Austrian securities
■ Prices of international securities
■ Reference exchange rates of the ECB.
Profitweb
Profitweb is a long-established Internet platform for securities data, offering the following benefits:
■ Master and transaction data on 1,417,212 active domestic and foreign financial instruments
■ Price and transaction data, classification data, performance and risk indicators, volumes and portfolios of all Austrian funds and all foreign funds registered for sale in Austria
■ Convenient search functions
■ Customisable analysis/reports, at data field level
■ Charting tool
■ Download options for all analyses and historical data.
Fund Data Portal
This central platform enables fund companies to exchange detailed fund data (particularly on full holdings) in the international, standard FundsXML format on an automated basis and to make the data available to business partners, data vendors, investors and regulators.
The main activities in 2011 were marketing efforts to acquire new customer segments, such as pension funds, insurance companies and data vendors.
Fund Processing Passport
Through the Fund Processing Standardisation Group, the European Fund and Asset Management Associa-tion (EFAMA) carefully analysed the efficiency of back office processes. Based on the insights gained, the
“Fund Processing Passport” (FPP) was developed. This document is harmonised across Europe and contains all essential operational information about a given fund.
Under contract to the Association of Austrian Investment Companies (VÖIG), OeKB collects and distributes the Fund Processing Passport data for the Austrian fund companies. This service for investment companies is available via www.profitweb.atand is also accessible through EFAMA’s central FPP Portal, in which OeKB acts as one of the five European Primary Providers.
At its website www.efama.org, EFAMA offers central-ised access to all existing European FPPs. With this FPP Portal, EFAMA intends to move a step closer to its goal of creating an efficient, single European market for investment funds.
Financial statement data transfer system
Bilanz Transfer, a system developed by OeKB, allows accounting firms, acting on behalf of their clients, to transfer the data from balance sheets, income statements, and income and expenditure accounts to banks in standardised XML format. The banks in turn use the system to provide analytical feedback to Austrian accounting firms (reports and ratios). The structure of the data and the electronic transmission technology are based on the data transfer specifi-cations of the Company Register.
When the Bilanz Transfer system went live, it was used by Bank Austria and Erste Bank as well as the savings bank sector. From 2010 the list grew to include Raiffeisen banks in five Austrian provinces, austria wirtschaftsservice (the business development bank), Volksbank credit unions and Hypo group banks, as well as several private banks. Further banks are preparing to join in 2012.
Tax data for foreign investment funds
In accordance with the Investment Fund Act, OeKB as the notification office under the Capital Markets Act has responsibility for the centralised collection and publication of the data on capital yield tax amounts (the tax is known in Austria as “Kapitalertragsteuer”, or “KESt”) of all foreign investment funds wishing to give their investors the opportunity for single all-in taxation in Austria. To this end, OeKB provides an effi-cient infrastructure to the fund companies, including the necessary electronic interfaces for collecting the data.
OeKB publishes these tax amounts for currently 19,018 ISINs on www.profitweb.at. The information is also available in the form of electronic files.
In 2012 the reporting of capital yield tax amounts is changing as a result of changes in legislation.
Preparatory work for this was initiated.
OeKB Sustainability Fund Index (OeSFX)
A growing number of investors are putting their money into companies whose conduct is particularly ethical in terms of environmental and social responsibility.
To achieve the greatest possible diversification of risk, a promising strategy for these investors is to buy environmentally or socially responsible funds. This is often referred to collectively as socially responsible investing (SRI), ethical investing or sustainable investing. With the OeKB Sustainability Fund Index developed by OeKB, investors can compare the performance of such funds to that of the entire universe of sustainable equity funds registered for sale in Austria.
The index is another way in which OeKB practices its lasting commitment to sustainable business. Details on the OeSFX and current prices are available at www.oesfx.at.
The transactions settled within the DS.A system are classified into three types as follows:
■ Transactions between two CSD.Austria account holders (“Internal” transactions)
■ Transactions between a CSD.Austria account holder and a counterparty having an account at another custodian of CSD.Austria, in a security held at that custodian (“External” transactions)
■ Transactions from the Custody Clearing Link (“CCL” transactions).
The custody account balances shown in these charts underline the important role which CSD.Austria, and hence the non-physical transfer of securities, have come to play in Austria. Approximately 90% of the nominal value of Austrian debt securities, more than 90% of the nominal amount of all listed Austrian equity securities and over 70% of Austrian “certificates”
(the popular structured products known as “Zertifi-kate”) are under custody with and serviced by CSD.Austria.
o Subject to approval by CSD.Austria, the following types of institutions may hold custody accounts: credit institutions, registered securities firms, members of a domestic securities exchange, official brokers of the Vienna Stock Exchange, foreign central securities depositories,
and securities clearing houses. CSD.Austria may also admit other legal or natural persons and companies as depositors.
CentralSecuritiesDepository.Austria
A book entry transfer of securities at CSD.Austria eliminates the need to move physical securities.
Instructions for securities transfers are generally placed electronically through OeKB’s DirectSettle-ment.Advanced (DS.A) system.
Through collective custody, banks that maintain accounts at CSD.Austria gain the benefits of
heigh-tened efficiency and security in the safekeeping and administration of securities. What is more, they save time and costs in their own in-house custody activities.
At 31 December 2011, CSD.Austria held 22,322 classes of securities for 162 depositorso(prior year:
22,398 and 167, respectively).