Frequently Asked Questions

Shareholders have the right to vote on corporate actions, policies, board members, and other issues, often at the company's annual shareholder meetings.

Because a corporation’s officers and board of directors (BOD) manage its daily operations, shareholders have no right to vote on basic day-to-day operational or management issues. However, shareholders may vote on major corporate issues, such as changes to the charter or to vote in or out members of the board of directors. Although common shareholders typically have one vote per share, owners of preferred shares often do not have any voting rights at all.

Typically, only a shareholder of record is eligible for voting at a shareholder meeting. Corporate records will name all owners of outstanding shares along with a record date preceding the meeting. Shareholders not listed in the record on the record date may not vote.

First and foremost, it’s important to keep in mind that not all shares have voting rights attached to them. When you’re selecting what platform you invest on you can usually find information on their voting rights through their website.

Unlike the single vote right that individuals commonly possess in democratic governments, the number of votes a shareholder has corresponds to the number of shares they own. Thus, somebody owning more than 50% of a company's shares can affect a majority of the vote and is said to have a controlling interest in the firm.

In the US, provisions in a private corporation's charter and its bylaws govern shareholders’ rights, including the right to vote on corporate matters. Along with state corporation laws, these provisions may limit the voting rights of shareholders. When a company goes public, shareholder rights are determined by the corporation, but must follow rules and guidelines established by the Securities and Exchange Commission as well as any rules set out by the exchange(s) that list the shares of the company.

A voting right is the right of a shareholder of a corporation to vote on matters of corporate policy, including decisions on the makeup of the board of directors, say on pay, corporate bylaw changes, issuing new securities, initiating corporate actions like mergers or acquisitions, approving dividends, and making substantial changes in the corporation's operations. It is common for shareholders to voice their vote by proxy by mailing in their response or by relinquishing their vote to a third party proxy voter.

It depends on the brokerage firm's fractional share investing program. Also, each company has its own voting requirements. You most likely don't get a vote with a fractional share; and you can't aggregate (pool) shares to have a vote. We suggest reaching out to the brokerage platform that you use to learn more about their policies and procedures.

Yes. DriveWealth, the carrying broker for brokerage services provided by Tulipshare, uses Say Communications, LLC (“Say Communications'') to facilitate the extension of voting rights to Fractional Shares. When you vote your interest in a Fractional Share, Say Communications will add the fractional position voted by you to the aggregate vote total for all shares of such security reported by Say Communications on behalf of DriveWealth to the applicable vote tabulator (“Tabulator”) for the meeting or shareholder event.

We talk a lot about purchasing ‘shares’. But what exactly are shares?

When you buy or subscribe for equities issued by a company, you are purchasing a part of that company. This makes you a ‘shareholder.’

Typically you would purchase shares in a company that you expect to grow and become profitable, because that would mean the value of your shares would also grow. However, if the company does not grow in value, or if it does not make adequate dividend payments, the share price may fall. If a company’s performance deteriorates and the share price drops further, the company could fail or get taken over. If this happens the shareholder may not have the right to the return of capital and their shares could become valueless.*

As you can see, shares can be a volatile asset, meaning their value can go up or down more than other assets.

*Note that if a company goes into liquidation, the shareholder will normally only receive money from the liquidator once all of the companies debts have been paid in full and only if any proceeds of the liquidation remain

You might have seen us include the phrase ‘capital at risk’ on most of our marketing materials. But what does it mean?

Tulipshare is an appointed representative of MJ Hudson Advisers Limited (FRN:692447) which is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. As such, we must adhere to their requirements, which include being “fair, clear, and not misleading” while promoting our services. In order to do that, we must remind our users and potential users that there are risks associated with investing money - or capital - in the financial markets.

Sometimes you will see us write the disclaimer succinctly, such as ‘capital at risk,’ as is common for many financial platforms to do. Other times we will include a longer disclaimer, such as ‘please remember, your capital is at risk - meaning investments can go up as well as down.’

Still have a question about what all of this means? Please feel free to drop us a line support@tulipshare.com.

What is a recurring deposit?

A recurring deposit allows users to set up a regularly-occurring payment to their Tulipshare wallet. Users can select the frequency (weekly or monthly) and amount. Money will then be transferred to the user’s wallet automatically, according to the selected settings, and an email will be sent to confirm the payment has gone through.

Users can then log into their account to invest the money from their wallet into a chosen campaign. A reminder will be sent if a user has not invested this money within a certain period of time.

Why use a recurring deposit?

Recurring deposits can be a great way to maintain a consistent saving and investment habit. Investing in small amounts at regular intervals can be a preferable option for those who aren't starting with a bigger lump sum to invest with.

When it comes to shareholder activism, the more stock you own in a company, the more power your vote wields at the company Annual General Meeting. That means that increasing your investments over time could increase the power of your voice as a shareholder.

Our team is made up of engineers, lawyers, marketers and sustainability researchers who work collectively to build our community, develop campaigns, engage with companies and advocate on behalf of our investors.

What has become clear from the past couple of years is that our system is broken and shouting about it has brought no meaningful change. What is needed now is action. We think that activist investing is a great tool to affect corporate change and that it can be a viable solution to counter corporate greed and irresponsibility. The problem is that very few retail investors are knowledgeable about their rights as shareholders and even fewer exercise their voting rights at annual meetings. It’s also very difficult to submit your own proposal for other shareholders to vote on.

We're solving this problem by channeling the rage we've seen and creating a platform that provides an outlet for our user base to have their voices heard as shareholders. With Tulipshare, we’re striving to become the largest community of like-minded impact investors globally.

There are a few ways that your investments on Tulipshare can help drive change. First and foremost, your investments have voting rights attached, and we make it easy for you to get insights and guidance around how you can join in at annual shareholder meetings to vote on proposals submitted by other shareholders - even with an investment as low as £1.

Since all investments on Tulipshare support campaigns which seek to improve environmental and social corporate policies - your investment increases the likelihood that companies will listen.

Put simply, shareholder activism is the act of investing your money into publicly traded companies held on the stock market and then using your shares to influence their corporate governance by engaging as a shareholder.

To submit a shareholder proposal, you must own shares of the company for a certain amount of time and with a certain market value as directed by the SEC. There are also rules governing the word count of the proposal, its format, and topics that may be grounds for exclusion.

Yes, our investors are able to vote at annual shareholder meetings for stocks that are purchased on our platform provided that you hold shares as of the record date. This means that if you buy shares after the record date, you won’t qualify to vote those shares at the upcoming shareholder meeting. Thus, it’s important to pay attention to the record date set by the company to ensure you hold your shares long enough so that you’re able to vote. Votes on fractional shares are aggregated at the custodian level.

This is specific to each company. We plan to publish a list of the dates for all of the campaigns on our platform, however dates for the 2022 proxy season have not been made public. For any additional questions or information, please don’t hesitate to reach out to support@tulipshare.com. You can also follow us on any social media platform to get the most up-to-date news on our campaigns.

Tulipshare is required by our executing broker to collect this information for regulatory and tax purposes as this information is required by the UK Tax Authority.

Our trading system and the securities available on our platform are all denominated in US Dollars. In order to invest, you must first exchange your funds from GB Pounds to US Dollars.

We’ll alert you around our campaign updates. If there is a related proposal that goes up for vote at the annual meeting, we will notify you in advance and when it’s time to vote.

If you earn dividends on your investments on Tulipshare, you can keep the dividends as cash in your account, use them to buy more shares, or withdraw as cash. Right now, we don’t offer automatic reinvestment - but it’s in the works!

DriveWealth is our executing broker and the custodian of our client accounts. We act as an introducing broker - we pass along all of the orders that we receive to DriveWealth for execution and custody.

As an investor on Tulipshare, you will be alerted as the campaign progresses. This can include email exchanges, news articles, webinars, and/or opportunities to engage directly with the target company as a Tulipshare investor.

Once our campaign is live, we engage directly with the company’s Investor Relations teams.

Yes, we’re working on offering this feature, and it will be available in the near future. Stay tuned!

Please see Tulipshare’s privacy policy.

Your money is held by DriveWealth, as custodian. It is protected by SIPC in the US. This provides protection against the loss of any securities (ie: theft) but does not protect against the loss of market value of the securities (ie: if the share price falls). It’s important to keep in mind that when you invest, the value of your investment can go up or down.

No. However, this is something that we may introduce in the future.

When you top up Tulipshare wallet, funds typically become available within 1-2 working days, however this can vary depending on your bank, with many finding the transaction time much quicker.

You will receive email confirmation when your funds are available. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to support@tulipshare.com

All users can withdraw funds by clicking the 'withdraw' button on your dashboard. Your funds will automatically convert from USD to GBP when you withdraw.

If you have recently sold shares, please note that the sell order can take up to 3 days to process, during this time you will be unable to withdraw funds.

The withdrawal process from your Tulipshare wallet to your bank account usually takes 1-2 working days, however this can vary depending on your bank and take up to a maximum of 5 working days.

If you have not received your withdrawal within 5 working days please contact support@tulipshare.com.

Yes, you can close your account. However, we are only able to close accounts that have been fully liquidated and show a zero balance. If you currently have holdings in your account, you will first need to liquidate your positions and transfer all funds out of your account. Once this is done, submit a request to close your account to support@tulipshare.com.

We charge fees to enable us to run our platform and to engage in shareholder activism related to our campaigns. We charge a conversion fee whenever you exchange funds for another currency (for example, GBP to USD). Our conversion fee is fixed fee of 0.75% of the amount to be converted. The specific conversion fee will be displayed to you prior to conversion.

We charge a transaction fee for securities transactions that is $5 per purchase transaction. A liquidation fee of $5 is also applicable when you sell your investment, If the total amount in your Tulipshare account is less than $5.00 at the time you sell your investment, we will instead collect a fee of 7% of the total amount of the order or the amount sold.

For more information about our fees, check out our fees page here.