The following are examples of costs associated with shareholder activities, under the standard set forth in paragraph 7.6:
a) Costs relating to the juridical structure of the parent company itself, such as meetings of shareholders of the parent, issuing of shares in the parent company, stock exchange listing of the parent company and costs of the supervisory board;
b) Costs relating to reporting requirements (including financial reporting and audit) of the parent company including the consolidation of reports, costs relating to the parent company’s audit of the subsidiary’s accounts carried out exclusively in the interest of the parent company, and costs relating to the preparation of consolidated financial statements of the MNE (however, in practice costs incurred locally by the subsidiaries may not need to be passed on to the parent or holding company where it is disproportionately onerous to identify and isolate those costs);
c) Costs of raising funds for the acquisition of its participations and costs relating to the parent company’s investor relations such as communication strategy with shareholders of the parent company, financial analysts, funds and other stakeholders in the parent company;
d) Costs relating to compliance of the parent company with the relevant tax laws;
e) Costs which are ancillary to the corporate governance of the MNE as a whole.
In contrast, if for example a parent company raises funds on behalf of another group member which uses them to acquire a new company, the parent company would generally be regarded as providing a service to the group member. The 1984 Report also mentioned “costs of managerial and control (monitoring) activities related to the management and protection of the investment as such in participations”. Whether these activities fall within the definition of shareholder activities as defined in these Guidelines would be determined according to whether under comparable facts and circumstances the activity is one that an independent enterprise would have been willing to pay for or to perform for itself. Where activities such as those described above are performed by a group company other than solely because of an ownership interest in other group members, then that group company is not performing shareholder activities but should be regarded as providing a service to the parent or holding company to which the guidance in this chapter applies.