Consultation Paper High level description, Nordic CSD Corporate ...

Dates are fundamental in Corporate Action calculations and processing of
entitlements, and crucial in pricing of securities in the trading. There are two
important areas to be harmonised: common definitions and common
harmonised relations between the different dates.
On the general level, the proposal would be to have one general rule
governing the relationship between the ex-date and the record date. However,
the forthcoming more detailed Corporate Action descriptions may lead to the
conclusion that, for different reason, this general rule should not apply to
certain Corporate Action types or instruments types. Exceptions may be
necessary e.g. due to national regulation or due to the nature of some
instrument types.
Based on the fact that all Nordic countries apply a T+3 settlement schedule,
the general rule governing the relationship between the ex-date and the record
date should be that ex-date should be two days prior to record date.
In more general, if the settlement schedule is expressed as T+x, the ex-date
should always be n days prior to the record date, where n = x-1.
Proposal [CA 12]
As a general rule, the ex-date should always be n days prior to the record
date, where n is one day less than the applied settlement schedule.
The payment date, i.e. – the date when the entitlement in the local currency of
the Issuer/issuing currency is distributed on the participant level should occur
as soon as possible after the record date. However, there are differences
between Corporate Action types in when the soonest possible payment date
can be. For example, there may be certain processing, such as collection of
taxation data that needs to take place between record date and payment date.
These differences need to be explored further. The overall aim is to distribute
the entitlements as soon as possible after record date. However, the aim is
that the same types of Corporate Actions have unified payment schedules.
Proposal [CA 13]
The Payment date should occur as soon as possible after the record date.
The overall aim should be to have one harmonised time schedule between the
key dates for all Corporate Actions, although it can already now be concluded
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