Many companies incorporated under Canadian law keep a register,
or branch register, of
transfers kept by one of the company’s duly
appointed “transfer agents”, not a register of
shareholders as with UK companies.
When we ask ourselves “where could the shares be
effectively dealt with” (Brassard v Smith), we must find out
where the company has established transfer agents to operate a
register, or branch register, of transfers. There usually is more
than one such transfer agent with whom it is open to a shareholder
to transfer his holding, regardless of where the relevant share
certificate was issued; some (but relatively few) companies have
such transfer agents in the UK. These equally available transfer
arrangements in various places are said to be
“interchangeable”, and for the purposes of locality in
relation to Inheritance Tax can be taken as equivalent to duplicate
or multiple registers (
IHTM27125).
This applies to shares registered in the name of the taxpayer
or his nominee (including marking names), and applies whether or
not the share certificates are endorsed in blank (Treasurer of
Ontario v Aberdein [1947] AC 24. This will apply whether the
company in question was incorporated under Canadian dominion or
provincial law.
