Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield: the 2020 short position and the shareholder vote

What the register showed

The disclosures charted here are the ones published by the AFM, the Dutch market authority, which lists every net short position of 0.5% or more with the holder's name. The first entry inside this window is 0.52% on 5 Feb 2020, and the window's low is 0.50% on 30 Apr 2020: both are barely above the threshold at which anything is published at all.

From the early summer of 2020 the named positions built quickly, reaching 16.58% on 12 Oct 2020. That is a high figure for a company of this size on any European register, where a single holder must cross 0.5% before it appears.

2020 and the vote

Shopping centres across Europe were closed for parts of 2020 under government restrictions on trading and movement. In September 2020 the company set out a plan that included a capital increase, and shareholders voted against that capital increase at a general meeting on 10 November 2020.

The register's high, on 12 Oct 2020, falls in the weeks before the vote. The named positions fell through the first months of 2021 and the window ends at 1.30% on 31 Dec 2021.

What this measure is

A named register of this kind shows less than a market-wide aggregate. It counts only holders above 0.5%, so a crowded position spread across many smaller holders can leave almost no trace, and a single large holder crossing back under the threshold removes its whole position from the sum in one day. The holders themselves are listed on the company page, which is the part of the record the aggregate cannot show.