
For Shareholders
Information for BaumInvest shareholders
Questions on participation
What is a BaumInvest share?
BaumInvest shares are “registered shares with restricted transferability” that are not traded on the stock exchange. Several shares are securitised and combined in so-called global certificates. These global certificates have a number and are kept in a global certificate register.
What do we mean with “locked amount” and “expiration of the lock”?
Background knowledge on the “lock”
Under German law, conversing any company into a shareholder company (AG) takes the option to sell their shares away from investors. This is based on a shift in tax systems that comes with the conversion. Taxes will no longer be determined individually, but rather in form of a flat rate withholding tax, which generally turns out to be less expensive. The lawmaker chose a 7-year period, in order to prevent companies from abusing this system. Within this time frame, sellers of shares are considered to have sold their shares at the exact date of conversion. The investor must calculate and pay taxes for any profits according to his or her individual tax rate. In reality, the calculation is even more complex than this, so our message for investors is: “If you sell your shares, you will have to pay a considerable amount of taxes for BI 1.”
For 5,000 shares: Using a retail price of 8,425 (= compensation offer for 5,000 shares) at an asset value of about 5,000EUR (Caution: this holds true for this amount to BI1 only. See §15b German EStG) the profit of the sale results in 3,425EUR. Using an individual tax rate of 35%, the tax amounts to circa 1,200EUR. After the 7-year lock, the calculation is very different. In case of a sale after the expiration date, merely the difference between 8,425EUR and the actual retail price falls under taxation law. As a result, the investor will generate a profit of 1,200 by simply waiting. In the example used here, the income returns for 5,000EUR within 7 years is at about 3,5% per year.
What is the shareholder register?
We need to have this shareholder registry, as BaumInvest refused to store shareholder information in a central securities depository. This would have meant that investors could not operate with their shares on their own – they would have needed to have a portfolio at credit institution as a middleman. At the same time, having a central securities depository administer the shares would have been very costly. Creating and administering the shareholder registry ourselves, we avoid costs and forcing our investors to work with a third party.
At what price can I sell my shares?
You can choose the retail price for your shares yourself, by determining a so called “limit” in your selling order on the secondary market.
Can I sign shares for my underage children or grandchildren?
Can I transfer my shares to another person? (Donation/Retail)
Questions about the reforestation in Costa Rica
Are there further reforestation projects planned?
Questions about the Socio-economic value
Can I compensate my CO2 emission by participating in the project?
To compensate for your CO2 emission, you have the option of buying these certificates, which are worth 1t of CO2 each. The respective certificate will then be ascribed to you and administered in an officially recognized register (Gold Standard Registry) – here we can also publicly present and advertise supporters, who bought CO2 compensation.