Brookfield Renewable Partners LP-BMG162581083
The ISA regulations require shares to be issued by a ‘company’ which is defined as a ‘corporate body with share capital’. This can sometimes be difficult to ascertain and HMRC has previously not commented on this and insisted that it is up to ISA managers to determine this.
Both Brookfield Renewable Partners and NextEra Energy Partners are established as Limited Partnerships and previous research suggest that such partnerships may not meet the definition of a company for ISA purposes (see links below).
We also need to consider what these partnerships offer to their investors. They currently offer a type of ‘unit’ to what they refer to as ‘unitholders’. Previous feedback from HMRC was that the legal nature of units such as there do not qualify as a ‘share’ and therefore wouldn’t meet the ISA criteria for ‘qualifying shares’.
So, although these organisations have units listed on the NYSE and we think it would be understandable to assume that such units should be eligible to be held in an ISA, all we can say is that based on the previous research we have done and previous feedback from HMRC, such units wouldn’t meet the definition of a ‘share’ issued by a ‘company’ (ie. a corporate body with share capital).