Share register and stock ledger requirements across 41 jurisdictions

The single source of truth for share ownership

Of all the records a corporation must maintain, the share register (or stock ledger, in US parlance) is the most important. The certificates can be lost. The minutes can be reconstructed. The articles can be re-issued. The share register is the only document that authoritatively answers: who owns the corporation? When a certificate and the register disagree, the register controls, in every jurisdiction we cover.

What the register must contain, where it is kept, how often it is updated, and who can inspect it varies across jurisdictions. The differences are small in the abstract but operationally significant. A corporation maintaining a register under DGCL § 219 is doing something different from one maintaining it under CBCA s. 50 or UK CA 2006 s. 113. This page surveys those differences across 41 jurisdictions and the statutes that govern them.

Choose your jurisdiction

Each guide covers what to maintain, where to keep it, who can inspect, and what happens if you don't.

Compare requirements across jurisdictions

The same artifact, different rules.

How registers drift, and why it matters

The most common failure mode in private corporations is not that the register is wrong from inception. It's that the register starts correct, then drifts away from reality across years of share transfers, option exercises, and corporate actions that get documented in emails and PDFs but never make it back to the register.

The gap typically shows up at the worst possible moment: a Series A diligence team requests the register and finds it doesn't match the cap table the corporation has been showing to investors. Or a court orders production in a § 220 or s. 21 inspection demand and the register turns out to be a year out of date. Reconstructing ownership history after the fact is expensive and forensically uncertain. Keeping the register current as transfers happen is the only reliable approach.