New regulations to protect investors’ details on share registers will be phased in from next month, a year earlier than expected. The Companies Act 2006 will allow a business to apply to a court to block access to its register.

Originally, the relevant section of the act, part eight, was due to come into force in October 2008. But the government has bought this forward to 1 October 2007. At the moment anyone can view a company’s share register. But, once the new regulations come in, if a company believes a request for its register is suspect, it can apply to a court, which may decide the request is not for a ‘proper purpose’ and block access.

The regulations were drawn up last year after animal rights extremists threatened to publish the names and addresses of GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) shareholders on the web. While ‘proper purpose’ has not been defined in the act, the Institute of Chartered Secretaries and Administrators (ICSA), which advises companies on such issues, has said ‘improper purposes’ may, aside from the obvious threat-making motive, include ripping off share registers to make ‘offers relating to securities.’

This highlights the other problem relating to registers – that being of brokers, including some FSA-authorised companies in the City as well as the usual boiler room suspects, using shareholder lists to make unsolicited approaches to investors.

The accelerated implementation of part eight only applies to companies that produce an annual return on or after 1 October. This is because simultaneous provisions in the act being bought in to protect investors’ details held on annual returns at Companies House will not come into force until next year.

Annual returns – in which companies have to provide a snap-shot of the register at a fixed date – are the other main way that unscrupulous operators can access shareholders’ details. But part 24 of the act, which says the return will no longer have to include the addresses of shareholders with holdings under 5%, does not come in until October 2008.

Clearly, if a judge blocks a request and then the company has to file its annual return under the existing rules, it will have been a wasted exercise, so the ‘proper purpose’ provisions will only kick in on the day the company lodges this year’s return. ICSA is advising companies they can bring their annual return date forward to

1 October.