the course of a securities transfer. According to USR 1995, the buyer acquired equitable title at the time when the instruction which required the issuer to register a transfer was sent by CREST.25 The transferee acquired title to the securities notwithstanding that the securities to which the instruction related might be unascertained.26 The transferee acquired the equitable interest even if the transferor acquired her equitable interest at the same time as the transferee’s equitable interest arose in the shares.27 The equitable title of the transferee subsisted until the time when the transferee’s name was entered on the issuer register.

The analysis presented here shows that ownership in equity continued to play a role after the implementation of the CREST transfer system. When switching over to an electronic transfer system, English law made use of the same legal techniques that had prevailed when paper documents were used to facilitate transfers. Notwithstanding the continued influence of incumbent legal doctrine, we can observe, however, that the introduction of an electronic transfer system reduced the time lag between the sales transaction and its completion. As a result, the buyer acquired legal title at an earlier point in time and the rules on ownership in equity began to lose some of their practical importance.

3.3.4 Conclusions

In England, the privatisation programme of the 1980s brought about the need for law reform. Paper documents were eliminated from the transfer process by way of dematerialisation. The process through which this was achieved shows the influence of incumbent providers of market infrastructure as well as that of incumbent legal doctrine.

Market infrastructure providers were able to delay reform and the first attempt to create a paperless transfer system (Talisman) had to be abandoned. When reform was successfully carried out, however, no attempt was made to create a legal infrastructure from scratch. The rules governing the paper-based system were transposed into the new one. The architecture of the CREST system mirrors the transfer procedure that had been in place previously and that originally developed as a reflection of the English law of novation.

England also continued to adhere to its dualistic approach to ownership; the distinction between ownership at law and ownership in equity remains. Ownership at law is transferred to the buyer when her name is entered into the securities register which, under USR 1995, was

25 USR 1995, reg. 25. 26 USR 1995, reg. 25 (6). 27 USR 1995, reg. 25 (3).