It would be a slight overstatement
to say that in this situation a share becomes a blockchain token. Regarding the
question of share form, both in a simple stock company and a joint-stock
company, when the new laws on these types of companies take effect, the
Commercial Companies Code will only state that “shares are not in document
form”. This means that they are not in conventional form (on paper), but
does not necessarily mean that they are not a document in the meaning of the
Civil Code (“data carrier the content of which can be viewed”). The
Commercial Companies Code only states in a relatively liberal way the
technology that can be used to maintain a shareholder register – it can be in
electronic form, and this also means in dispersed form and in a decentralised
database. In practice, meanwhile, addressing the issue of the form of a
security being a share on the basis of legal literature could prove to be of
secondary importance if this kind of tokenisation of shares becomes a fait
accompli due to tokens being used in the technical form of a shareholder
register.

Provisions on the form of a
shareholder register and the option of it being maintained in dispersed form
and as a decentralised database are worded in the same way for both a simple
stock company and a joint-stock company. The list of entities entitled to
maintain a register of that kind differs, however. In both cases, these are
entities entitled to operate securities accounts under the Securities Act. In the
case of the simple stock company, however, notaries with their practice in
Poland will also be able to do this.

The main question that this raises is
whether there is any reason to use a “dispersed and decentralised database”
if the Commercial Companies Code states clearly that a shareholder register
must be maintained by a specific entity. The Commercial Companies Code leaves
no doubt as to the role of the entity that maintains the register. Regardless
of the form of the register, this entity is required to ensure integrity of the
data contained in the register, and that those data remain secure. Any
joint-stock company, and simple stock company, will have an obligation to promptly
conclude an agreement for operation of a shareholder register.

It is questionable therefore what
is to be achieved by maintaining a shareholder register in dispersed and
decentralised form, if, under the law, there clearly has to be a central entity
responsible for maintaining it. Initiatives now emerging on the market, aimed
at creating business products related to blockchain shareholder registers, will
provide a range of answers to that question. The simplest solution would
probably be to create a dispersed register, for example using existing blockchain
infrastructure, while this would be a “permissioned” model, in which the
entity maintaining the register would hold all of the authorisations necessary
to meet legal requirements.

Alternatively, a shareholder
register would be dispersed and decentralised not only because dispersed
register technology controlled by the entity maintaining the register would be
used, but also because of an arrangement between multiple entities of that kind
using the same technological solution. The Commercial Companies Code does not rule
out one technological solution being created and maintained for example by a
group of notaries (in the case of a simple stock company) provided that each of
them duly performs the relevant tasks required of entities that maintain
shareholder registers. In this scenario, using blockchain or some other
dispersed register might be much more sensible, because the dispersal and
decentralisation would result from the servicing of a large number of
companies, the technological characteristics of the system used, and also
existence of many entities maintaining the appropriate shareholder registers. Formally,
these would continue to be separate shareholder registers maintained for
various companies. There is no question of a single shareholder register for
multiple companies maintained by various entities. In this sense, the question
in the heading is incorrectly formulated.

Naturally, this approach would still mean resolving a series of legal issues, not only closely connected to corporate law. As personal data are processed in a shareholder register, the solution adopted would have to comply with personal data regulations. In the case of data processing in dispersed registers, this is not always easy. The entities listed in the shareholder register would also have to be identifiable, and the register would obviously be open to the company and each shareholder. In this case, some form of division of an electronic identification system between individual entities maintaining the register could be considered, for example within a dispersed register as well (because blockchain presents interesting potential for creating electronic identification systems).

 We will probably see dispersed and
decentralised database shareholder registers introduced for the first time when
the simple stock company laws come into force in March 2020. At that time it
will be seen whether the model of multiple entities maintaining shareholder
registers sharing infrastructure is of interest to the market.

Jacek
Czarnecki