Ariticle

Shareholding Disclosures Data Through DataScope Solutions

September 06, 2022

Anantha Jagannath
Customer Success Manager
Jirapongse Phuriphanvichai
Developer Advocate

Last Updated: Jan 2026

Disclaimer

In order to reproduce the sample below, you will need to have valid credentials for DataScope Select. The source code in this article was simplified for illustration purposes, you can find the full project here.

Overview – What is Shareholding Disclosure

The company finances its overall operations and growth by using different sources of funds. Debt comes in the form of bond issues or long-term notes payable, while equity is classified as common or preferred stock. Share capital is formed from equity (common/ordinary and preferred stock) and respective par values.

Shares represent ownership of a company. When an individual buys shares in your company, he/she becomes one of its owners. Shareholders choose who runs a company and are involved in making key decisions, such as whether a business should be sold.

Increasingly stringent regulatory requirements mandate that asset managers monitor any changes in their equity, sovereign debt, and related derivative positions in each issuer and disclose when applicable thresholds and rules are breached. Finding accurate data to comply with the intricacies of the rules that differ for each regulatory authority around the world creates a significant challenge.

Market Trends & Competition:

Regulators around the world have mandated market participants to make disclosures on their holdings of instruments that have a “similar economic effect” to equities when they accumulate a substantial shareholding in an entity, invest in a protected industry, become involved in a takeover bid or engage in short selling.

Today’s challenges for reporting include:

Shareholdings Disclosure Regulations are both ubiquitous and heterogeneous
This creates a challenge for individuals and institutions holding shares across multiple jurisdictions:
- Unique reporting rules
- Frequency of reporting
- Format of disclosure
- The types of data that will need to be included
Buy-side and sell-side institutions need to thereby continually monitor changes in their shareholdings and compare these with the disclosure triggers specified by local regulators
Record inflows into Equity funds and ETFs
Seeking alpha in new global jurisdictions
Regulatory fines are increasing for non-disclosure of assets

The LSEG DataScope Solutions

LSEG PRS data includes 15 different types of total shares and total voting rights, allowing you to monitor your positions by providing an accurate denominator. In addition, we provide a comprehensive set of reference data integral to the numerator calculation process. Our data helps you meet the challenges presented by globally diverse regulations relating to Major, Short, Takeover, and Industry-specific disclosure rules and thresholds. LSEG helps you answer the reporting challenge.

Our data for Shareholding Disclosures is a primary source used by many of the world’s largest asset managers to fuel their disclosure processes. Our solution has been developed in partnership with large buy-side institutions to specifically respond to their data challenges.

Our offering features:

Shares and voting rights collected from over 150 reliable and timely sources, as well as regular filings from over 70,000 listed companies, providing coverage for 100 countries
Total shares, voting rights, and voting shares data at the instrument and issuer level for all classes of shares relevant to deriving an accurate denominator (including unlisted share classes)
All share types (issued, listed, outstanding, treasury), covered at both instrument level and derived at the issuer level.
Reference data and analytics required to support disclosures (e.g., industry classifications, market segment identifiers, underlying asset details and ratios for derivatives and depository receipts, underlying/instrument/issuer hierarchies, and more)
Sources that align to where regulators enforce a specific source stipulation (e.g., in the Netherlands, Hong Kong, etc.)
Total voting rights where nations allow variable voting rights per share dependent on holder circumstances (e.g., Florange Act in France)

In a nutshell:

Accuracy of shares and voting rights content
Precise and unique data
Outstanding service
Focus on quality assurance
Flexible delivery (customizable Web interface, which offers delivery by REST API, (S)FTP, CSV, and XML with custom file layout)

We are going to use a CSV file as an input, which will consist of two columns:

Security identifier type, CHR (ChainRIC), ISN (ISIN), CSP (CUSIP) or SED (SEDOL) or RIC (RIC) or File code (IPC)
Security identifier.

So, in our case, the file companies.csv will look like this:

With this input file, we will get the following list of fields from DataScope Select.

Fields	Asset	Description
Shares Amount	Equity	Amount of shares for this share type. The latest default record is returned.
Shares Amount Change Date	Equity	Date the number of shares is confirmed as being true; This value does not necessarily represent the date on which the number of shares is changed.
Shares Amount Type	Equity	Code indicating the share amount type (OUT, ISS, LIS, TRE, FFL, CLH, AUT or UNC).
Shares Amount Type Description	Equity	Description of Shares Amount Type.
Shares Outstanding	Equity	Total number of shares outstanding, issued or listed, including all equity issues issued by the company. Issues deemed non-primary issue by LSEG are excluded from total shares outstanding.
Total Shares - Default	Equity	Total number of shares for a company summing all classes of shares that qualify for inclusion using shares for the default share type. This will be the Outstanding, Listed or Issued number, depending on the market.
Total Shares - Default - Audit	Equity	Details of instruments, number of shares, conversion ratio and any other information included in calculating Total Shares - Default.
Total Shares - Default - Effective Date	Equity	Effective date for Total Shares - Default.
Total Shares - Issued	Equity	Total number of shares for a company summing all classes of share that qualify for inclusion using class level issued shares.
Total Shares - Issued - Audit	Equity	Details of instruments, number of shares, conversion ratio and any other information included in calculating Total Shares - Issued.
Total Shares - Issued - Effective Date	Equity	Effective date for Total Shares - Issued.
Total Shares - Listed	Equity	Total number of shares for a company summing all classes of share that qualify for inclusion using class level listed shares.
Total Shares - Listed - Audit	Equity	Details of instruments, number of shares, conversion ratio and any other information included in calculating Total Shares - Listed.
Total Shares - Listed - Effective Date	Equity	Effective date for Total Shares - Listed.
Total Shares - Outstanding	Equity	Total number of shares for a company summing all classes of share that qualify for inclusion using class level Outstanding shares.
Total Shares - Outstanding - Audit	Equity	Details of instruments, number of shares, conversion ratio and any other information included in calculating Total Shares - Outstanding.
Total Shares - Outstanding - Effective Date	Equity	Effective date for Total Shares - Outstanding.
Total Voting Shares - Default	Equity	Sum of the number of shares, with voting rights, for each class (that qualify for inclusion). For example: Number of A shares with voting rights + number of B shares with voting rights. Uses the Default share numbers in the calculation.
Total Voting Shares - Issued	Equity	Sum of the number of shares, with voting rights, for each class (that qualify for inclusion). For example: Number of A shares with voting rights + number of B shares with voting rights. Uses Issued share numbers in the calculation.
Total Voting Shares - Listed	Equity	Sum of the number of shares, with voting rights, for each class (that qualify for inclusion). For example: Number of A shares with voting rights + number of B shares with voting rights. Uses the Listed share numbers in the calculation.
Total Voting Shares - Outstanding	Equity	Sum of the number of shares, with voting rights, for each class (that qualify for inclusion). For example: Number of A shares with voting rights + number of B shares with voting rights. Uses the Outstanding share numbers in the calculation.
Total Voting Shares - Treasury	Equity	Sum of the number of shares, with voting rights, for each class (that qualify for inclusion). For example: Number of A shares with voting rights + number of B shares with voting rights. Uses the Treasury share numbers in the calculation.
Total Voting Shares - Unlisted	Equity	Sum of the number of Unlisted shares, with voting rights, for each share class that qualify for inclusion.

For more information regarding field descriptions, please refer to the LSEG DataScope Select Data Content Guide.

We are going to use the following DataScope Select templates:

Composite

So, we are going to establish a connection to DataScope Select, upload the companies.csv input file, then extract the fields from the composite template within DataScope Select.

Code

Prerequisites

In order to start working with the DataScope Select .NET SDK you will need to download the latest SDK, extract it, copy the following files into your solution folder and reference them in your IDE:

Microsoft.OData.Client.dll
Microsoft.OData.Core.dll
Microsoft.OData.Edm.dll
Microsoft.Spatial.dll
Newtonsoft.Json.dll
DataScope.Select.Core.RestApi.Common.dll
DataScope.Select.RestApi.Client.dll

For more information on how to install the SDK have a look at the DSS .NET SDK tutorial 1.

Connecting to the server

Firstly, we need to establish a connection to DataScope Select host and get a token.

The code sends the HTTP POST request message with the username and password to the https://selectapi.datascope.lseg.com/RestApi/v1/Authentication/RequestToken endpoint.

If the credential is valid, the HTTP response will contain a token.

Reading the input file

Once the connection to the host is established, our app will read the companies.csv input file, parse it and create an InstrumentIdentifier list.

Creating an array of field names

We are going to extract the following fields from the composite report template.

RIC
Ticker
File Code
Exchange Code
Asset SubType
Asset SubType Description
Refinitiv Classification Scheme
Refinitiv Classification Scheme Description
Shares Amount
Shares Amount Change Date
Shares Amount Type
Shares Amount Type Description
Shares Outstanding
Total Shares - Default
Total Shares - Default - Audit
Total Shares - Default - Effective Date
Total Shares - Issued
Total Shares - Issued - Audit
Total Shares - Issued - Effective Date
Total Shares - Listed
Total Shares - Listed - Audit
Total Shares - Listed - Effective Date
Total Shares - Outstanding
Total Shares - Outstanding - Audit
Total Shares - Outstanding - Effective Date
Total Voting Shares - Default
Total Voting Shares - Issued
Total Voting Shares - Listed
Total Voting Shares - Outstanding
Total Voting Shares - Treasury
Total Voting Shares - Unlisted

Thus, we create an array of these field names.

Extracting Data

Now, we have an instrument list and an array of fields. Let us use the CompositeExtractionRequest object to extract data for all instruments.

The code sends the HTTP POST request message with the following content in the body to the https://selectapi.datascope.lseg.com/RestApi/v1/Extractions/ExtractWithNotes endpoint.

The raw HTTP response contiains the extracted data and the Notes information.

Parsing and displaying content

The .NET function returns the ExtractionResult object which contains extracted data and Notes information. The following code is used to parse and display the data and Noted information. Moreover, the extracted data is written to an output file (output.csv).

Run the example

The example accepts four optional parameters.

The output when running the example is:

Summary

DataScope Select can provide shareholding disclosure data through the Composite report template. The data can be extracted via DataScope Select Web GUI or DataScope Select REST API. This article explains the significance of shareholding disclosure data and how to retrieve the data via the DataScope Select REST API. It also provides the example that uses DataScope Select .NET SDK to extract this information from DataScope Select.

References

Reuters. 2020. French financial watchdog says Elliott 'obstructed' investigation that led to 20 million euro fine. [online] Available at: <https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-elliott-regulator-idUSKCN2240R1> [Accessed 31 August 2022].
LSEG.com. 2022. Shareholding Disclosure. [online] Available at: <https://www.lseg.com/en/data-analytics/market-data/data-analytics-pricing/shareholding-disclosure> [Accessed 31 August 2022].