Doesn’t the piece of paper confer ownership of some shares of stock (which means you own some percentage of the company)? It’s not a bearer bond but not too far off I think. The certificates have my brother’s name on them so I’d have to prove they are properly mine I’d guess.
In my case it is an inheritance but I can easily prove that to any court (so, let’s assume the shares are mine).
There’s a difference- your brother isn’t out of luck if he just can’t find the certificate. He’s not out of luck if someone stole the certificate. He’s not out of luck if the merger involved the exchange of an acquiring company’s stock for the stock of the acquired company because he would then own stock in the acquiring company. He’s only out of luck if there was a cash-for-shares offer and there was a deadline and he didn’t meet the deadline and the stock wasn’t sold anyway with the cash deposited in his brokerage account - which is what further reading tells me is what would most likely happen.
Nope. I have many stock certificates for when I taught financial algebra. It makes a great class decoration but it is just paper. At some point, the shares represented by the paper became electronic and could be bought or sold independent of the piece of paper.
It might or might not - if for example, your brother had wanted to sell that stock , he might have been able to sell it without the certificates because the broker and/or the company also has records of his ownership. But if the stock was sold without the certificate , that means the certificate no longer denotes ownership. As an example, let’s say I lose a physical savings bond. I get a replacement because the Treasury has a record of my purchase. I cash in the replacement. Fifty years later, my kid finds the original bond - it isn’t worth anything.
I don’t even have certificates for the little bit of stock I own.
Are physical stock certificates even a thing anymore? I can’t remember seeing any past the 90s (maybe earlier…not sure).
It’s mostly electronic now.
ETA: Makes me sad though. There was something cool about a physical stock certificate. Partly because they were usually ornate in their design and on durable (read nice to hold) paper.
They have to be special ordered and cost money. Usually as a give when you buy your kid one share of Disney for example. But even that is slowly being phased out. In my example of Disney stock, the physical certificates were discontinued in 2021.
Been a lot ninja’ed while I was blathring. But FWIW here’s me trying to put it all in one coherent answer . ,
Completely setting aside for a moment the distinction between you and your brother.
The piece of paper certainly DID at one time serve as a record of your ownership. At some time back in WAG 1970s, every corporation in America switched from paper certificates as evidence of ownership to a central share register maintained by the corporation. The actual clerical work was commonly outsourced to a brokerage, but that register became the one and only official list of who owned how many shares. When that centralization happened to those shares, the paper stock certificates were cancelled as financial instruments and the fancy pieces of paper became a neato souvenir of a bygone swell era. Nothing more.
Now at that time you would either have been notified by mail that your ownership record was in the central registry, your certificates are null & void, and if you ever wanted to sell your shares contact your own brokerage. OR, as others have said, it’s common at these kinds of big reorganizing events for companies to buy out great numbers of individually tiny shareholdings to simplify their work. IOW, we’ll buy your shares at next month’s end of month share price if you want; just return this form and we’ll mail you a check for your shares. Either way your certificates are now souvenirs, not financial documents.
Something similar would happen at any merger / buyout. The shareholder of record at the central registry would get snail-mail offering either to buy the old shares outright, or you’ll get X shares of the new company for every Y shares you hold in the old company, or some combo of cash and new shares. Whichever option you choose the old shares legally disappear at the merger. Leaving all the old company shareholders with some combo of cash and new shares in the new company at that new company’s central share registry. And perhaps leaving some old company shareholders with souvenir pieces of paper from the old company.
Switching back to reality with both brother & you.
You’d now need to trace the history of when that company switched to central share repository, what you or (more likely) your brother did way back then ~50 years ago to keep or sell back the shares. Then what, if anything, else he ever did with his centrally recorded shares from then forward until either the merger or his death, whichever came first.
If the merger came first, you’d need to find out what option he chose in the merger. If he kept shares in the new company, then you need to trace whether he ever sold them before his death. If not, those should have transferred to you during the estate / probate process. If his brokerage account was POD you, the fact you didn’t get anything through that then says there was nothing to get; the shares had been sold somewhere along the way. If it went through probate, there’s the issue that you’d need to know to contact that brokerage to tell them about the probate. People forget about long-dormant accounts all the time. The heirs never discover them either.
If he did still hold shares in something at his death and they remain unclaimed long enough (~10-20 years depending on the state), they go to his state’s unclaimed property department.
If you are interested in stock certificates qua art here is a short thread that you might be interested in.
I thought there was a possibility of signing over your shares physically on the back of the certificate, the buyer would send the physical certificate to the brokerage showing the transfer, the transfer would be made electronically and the certificate would then be destroyed.
I believe that is one way certificates were voluntarily filtered out of circulation before the final cut off where all certificates were replaced by central repository records.
But that’s a red herring for the OP; his certificates were not sold and handed in. So I didn’t mention it. This whole area is complicated enough just sticking to the basics.
Wouldn’t that have already be done by the brother or the broker? I think that if the OP is the heir, they just need to figure out who the brokerage is and ask them. IF the brother did not use a brokerage then calling the company that bought out Interstate may accomplish the same thing.
I worked for a place for most of the 90s that continued to offer paper certificates until they went belly up in 1999. When my shares vested, I would go to one of the Admins and ask to get my stock and a couple of weeks later, I would get a pretty certificate on fancy paper. I would physically take it to the Dean Witter office and they would put the shares in my account. For some reason, stock options worked differently, they’d be electronically put in my account.
I was laid off in late 1998 and one of the perks was that they vested all of my shares and gave me my final certificate.
I used to do IT support for both the Accounts Payable and Shareholder Records departments in my old company. At that time, they both had minicomputers physically within their offices where they would print the stock certificates and checks.
In the Shareholder department, they would take a blank stock certificate and use it as the good-bye card for retirees or long-time employees who left the company. They’d frame it for the person. Cool. Sadly, I never was able to snag a blank one for myself. They weren’t especially ornate though, so not too desirable.
One of the guys would actually drive to LAX every morning to pick up “the bag” with all the certificates that came back to the company for whatever reason. It was a different world back then.
Here’s what you do. Call the transfer agent of Alliant Energy, tell them you have some old Interstate Power Company certificates, and you want to exchange them for Alliant Energy shares. If you get resistance, consider escalating the matter (that’s the magic word: escalate). If that doesn’t work, you lose. I’m guessing you lose, but that’s the procedure. Or at least that’s what I would do. You might want to have the old social security number and address of record of the deceased handy.
If you win, ask for a check for past dividends. If you win, you will then go through a process of transferring book entry shares to your broker. At that point you can sell the shares (or buy more!)
The transfer agent of Alliant Energy is EQ Shareowner Services. Prepare to be on hold for a while. Expect lackadaisical customer service. Have a pad of paper at hand and as always write down the name of the person you are speaking to.
More, from Investopedia, emphasis added:
Do Stock Certificates Expire?
Stock certificates do not expire. If you have a stock certificate that is extremely old of a company that still exists, that stock certificate is still valid and represents ownership in that company. If, however, the company does not exist, then depending on what happened to the company will determine the value of the stock certificate. If the company merged with another company then the stock certificate may represent a certain value in the current company. If the company closed due to bankruptcy, then most likely the stock certificate will have no value.
So yes, this is issue is worth waiting on hold for a while to clarify the situation.
For any interested, here is one of the certificates:
Great pic.
Note that the upper corners say the certificate is good for less than 100 shares.
Since your merger occurred in the 90’s you might be able to google up a document that indicates what the exchange ratio was between old & new shares. Could be damned near anything from 100:1 to 1:100. Probably wasn’t that extreme, but there’s also no particular reason to expect it was 1:1.
Knowing that each certificate has a limit of 99 shares, times however many certificates you have, times that old:new exchange ratio, times the current share price of the buying company gives you a rough measure of your value at issue here. Also be worth checking to see if the buying company split or reverse split between the merger & now.
The effort you might go to for $500K is rather greater than for $500.00.
Here is what I found:
Interstate Power Company was merged to form what eventually became Alliant Energy:
WPL Holdings is trading around $90/share today.
Remember that Interstate Power Company probably had some splits between the 1960s and 1990s. If the ticker was IPL, the record is as follows:
IPL (IPL) has 3 splits in our IPL split history database. The first split for IPL took place on November 13, 1986. This was a 2 for 1 split, meaning for each share of IPL owned pre-split, the shareholder now owned 2 shares. For example, a 1000 share position pre-split, became a 2000 share position following the split. IPL’s second split took place on March 19, 1996. This was a 3 for 2 split, meaning for each 2 shares of IPL owned pre-split, the shareholder now owned 3 shares. For example, a 2000 share position pre-split, became a 3000 share position following the split. IPL’s third split took place on March 19, 1999. This was a 2 for 1 split, meaning for each share of IPL owned pre-split, the shareholder now owned 2 shares. For example, a 3000 share position pre-split, became a 6000 share position following the split.
So 2:1, 3:2, 2:1. That’s 6:1 overall. Multiply that by 1.11 : 6.66 times the shares on the cert - cool. That’s how many shares you may own in Alliant Energy Corp. (Maybe. Your brother may have reported the shares as lost. Or he may have been issued certs during the split and cashed those in. Only the good Lord and the transfer agent know.)
You can look up stock split history here. Look up another ticker if IPL isn’t correct.
Starting to seem this might be worth more effort on my part.
Thanks to everyone so far! This is new to me and this helps a lot!
Does anyone know what this means?
Is this one hundred shares or one share? Or no shares? Not sure how to read this.
