The Serbian Parliament adopted amendments to the Serbian Company Law (Law) on 8 June 2018, and they were published in the official journal on the same date.

This is the first overhaul of the Serbian Company Law since it was enacted back in 2011. Most of the amendments relate to the introduction of the concepts required for Serbia's accession to the EU (such as cross-border merger and European company forms). However, a lot of the changes have been made in an attempt to resolve the issues which occurred in the practical implementation of the previous Law.

The Law's entry into force is planned in three phases, and is somewhat complicated:

Below is an overview of the most important changes.

Business names

Under the amendments to the Law:

E-address

Until 20 October 2019, all companies will have to register their e-mail addresses with the companies register.

Distribution of dividends

The amended Law introduces a deadline for the payment of dividends after being declared. The deadline is 6 months following the decision on declaring dividends.

Assets of significant value

The amendments to the Law attempt to introduce some clarifications to the provisions concerning the disposal of assets of significant value i.e. assets exceeding 30% of the company's asset value (which require shareholders' meeting approval and in turn trigger the rights of dissenting minority shareholders to sell their shares to the company). This concept has been the source of tensions between the management and the minority shareholders ever since it was introduced into the Serbian legal system back in 2004. The interest of the management and the majority shareholders has been to limit the application of this provision (in turn, limiting the right of minority shareholders to force a sale of their shares), while the minority shareholders' interests have been the opposite.

The amendments relate to situations which are most frequent in practice – taking out a loan and granting securities for such a loan. Now, for the purposes of calculating the 30% threshold, the higher amount between (i) the loan value and (ii) the value of each of the securities given for such a loan is to be taken into consideration, and not the sum of each of these individual values.

While the attempt to bring clarification to this complicated and burdensome concept is certainly welcome, it still remains to be seen whether this will bring any significant benefit in practice.

Transactions involving personal interest

The amendments introduce changes to the internal approval procedure for transactions involving the personal interest of the shareholders or directors:

Branches of Serbian Companies

The amendments introduce the requirement (so far, it was an option) for Serbian companies to register all their branch offices in Serbia with the companies' register. Serbian companies that have non-registered branches in Serbia will have a one-year period to register them.

Minority shareholders in limited liability companies

Decrease of share capital in limited liability companies

According to the amendments, a "regular" version of share capital decrease, which involves payments to shareholders (such as in the case of overcapitalisation) is not possible. Now, share capital decrease is possible only as a matter of, more or less, "accounting" changes – the covering of losses, the creation of reserves etc.

The amendments to the Law have only formalised the existing practice of the authorities, which prohibited this type of share capital decrease even before these amendments. The expectations of the business community, that such an extremely conservative and ungrounded practice will be terminated by these amendments, did not materialise; to the contrary, we now have a strict legal prohibition against the decrease of share capital in the case of the overcapitalisation of a Serbian limited liability company.

Valuation of shares in joint stock companies

The conditions for determining the market value of shares in a joint stock company have been changed. The amended Law now prescribes that the market value of shares is the average weighted price of shares on the regulated market in the period of 6 months prior to the issuance of the decision on determining the market value, provided that:

If the above conditions are met, when determining the value of the shares for the purposes of a buy-out of shares held by dissenting minority shareholders, only the market value should be taken into consideration, and there is no requirement to determine the book or the evaluated value of the shares.

If there is no market value for the specific shares, the higher amount between the book value and the value evaluated by authorised evaluators is to be paid as the price to the dissenting minority shareholders.

These amendments apply immediately after the publication of the amendments, i.e. as of 9 June 2018.

Harmonisation with EU regulations

There are some amendments, in relation to EU integrations, which will enter into force on 1 January 2022. The amended Law: