A shareholder register is a common requirement for private companies in numerous countries, including but not limited to the UK, the US, and Denmark. Countries such as Sweden, Australia, and Finland keep an equivalent share register. The register consisting of a list of the company's shareholders, which was historically kept in a loose-leaf or bound book. Even today though, newly formed companies continue to use and manually update a hard-copy, despite the electronic version often being easier to maintain and just as acceptable from a legal perspective.