Axa offers deal on selling fee

By RICHARD BRADDELL

Axa Asia Pacific aims to clean up its share register by offering 144,000 shareholders with small holdings the chance to sell at reduced transaction costs.

More than 41,000 of these shareholders live in New Zealand.

Under the offer, made to holders of 300 or fewer shares, Axa will facilitate the sales for a $A15 or $19 administration fee on each transaction.

Axa has 96,626 New Zealand shareholders, most of whom acquired their shares during the demutualisation of National Mutual in 1996.

The company would rather not have many of them, mainly because of the $A25 a shareholder it costs to administer parcels of as little as four shares.

Many of these unmarketable parcels were acquired as shares in lieu of dividend that were delivered immediately after holders had sold their original shares.

Axa's chief executive, Les Owen, said the registry tidy-up would reduce the waste created by producing reports and correspondence that many of the recipients did not want.

The clean-up was not an opportunity for Axa's French parent to go over the 51 per cent ownership allowed by the Australian Government.