Shareholder Inspection Rights in South Africa and Foreign Jurisdictions

Corporate information is valuable and companies must protect business strategies and there is legitimate justification for opacity in the boardroom. On the other hand, however, some information access is necessary to support sound corporate governance. It is also trite that   shareholder inspection rights, inter alia, facilitates and enable shareholder activism in that it allows a shareholder an opportunity to identify other shareholders with a view to communicating and garnering support for resolutions to be proposed. Hence there is a need to balance these two competing interests.