Anaysis of the ownership limit for bank's shares in Iranian Law system

Iranian Commercial Act has no limitations for ownership of shares of one company by one person. About banks, however, there are some limitations for owning shares according to the distributive justice and corporate governance principals and supporting of minorityshareholders. In the first step in Iranian law system, Money and Credit Council issued two regulations in 1379; regulation 948 and regulation 955, but these regulations did not last for a long time as administrative justice court made them void in 1381.This was not the end of that route however. The second step was amendment of fourth development program Act in 1387.This Act regulated that there should be some limitation for owning banks shares; limitations that lead to the voiding of transactions if transcended. In this article we elaborate on all the existing limitations for owning the bank's shares in Iranian law system. We also try to shed some light on how we can interpret these regulations. Finally we point out that these regulations should be interpreted very rigidly because this is exceptional; the compass of these regulations should not be expanded to the issues that not related to those limitations directly as the basic principle is freedom in owning company shares as much as everybody can.