§ After Clause 61, insert the following new Clause:—
§ Joint shareholders
§ (".—(1) Except where the rules of a building society otherwise provide, any notice or other document may be given or sent by the building society to the joint holders of shares in the building society by giving or sending it to the joint holder who is first named in their books (hereinafter in this section referred to as the senior joint holder), but this subsection shall not he read as preventing any joint holder of shares from exercising the right under this Act of a member to obtain from a building society on demand a copy of the balance sheet or of the annual return.
§ (2) Any shares in a building society which are held jointly shall, for the purpose of determining who is qualified to vote, whether in person or by proxy, on any resolution at a meeting held after the commencement of this Act and, where relevant, the number of votes any person may then give, be regarded as held by the senior of the joint holders alone; and accordingly a person who is only a member of a building society by reason of being a joint holder of shares, other than the senior joint holder, shall not be qualified to vote on any such resolution.
§ (3) For the purposes of the following enactments (under which the consent or concurrence of a certain number of members of a building society is required)—
- (a) paragraph 3 of section thirty-two of the principal Act, and
- (b) paragraph (b) of section thirty-three of that Act, as amended by this Act, and
- (c) section five of the Societies (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act, 1940, and
- (d) section (Transfers of engagements and unions involving a building society of Northern Ireland) of this Act,
§ (4) The senior joint holder, and not any of the others, shall have the right to join in making any application under section five or section seven of the Building Societies Act, 1894 (which confer certain powers of inspection and investigation), and any reference in those sections to the total membership of a building society shall be read accordingly.
§ (5) The name and address of any person who is a joint holder of shares in a building society, other than the senior joint holder, need net on that account be entered in the register to be maintained under section twenty-seven of this Act, and if a name and address is so entered the entry shall indicate that the person named is a joint holder who is not the senior joint holder.
890§ (6) Joint holders of shares in a building society shall be entitled to choose the order in which they are named in the books of the building society.")
§ VISCOUNT HAILSHAMMy Lords, Amendment No. 58 also fulfils an underking I gave in the course of the debate on May 12. I then promised that provisions would be inserted in the Bill to deal generally with the position of joint shareholdings. The clause ensures that one joint holder is regarded as acting for all joint holders for the purposes of attending and voting at meetings and so on, but the substantive rights of other joint holders to their property are not affected. I beg to move that this House Both agree with the Commons in the said Amendment.
§ Moved, That this House doth agree with the Commons in the said A mendment.—(Viscount Hailsham.)
§ On Question, Motion agreed to.