I’ve read what has been written about similar situations, but mine has a different wrinkle. My husband recently died. Going through his papers I found a stock certificate in both our names for a company that has since been taken over in a hostile takeover. I am trying to get my shares listed in my name alone in the new company. The new company says that there was a time limit on exchanging shares and that this time limit passed several years ago. I have no memory or proof of either of us ever being notified of this. I requested proof that we had been informed and received no answer. We are talking about $11K in value (I’d get shares, not money, per their agreement) and while it doesn’t seem right that they can just take our money without providing proof that they tried to get us to exchange our shares, I’m aware that legal fees to dispute this would probably eat up the profits. I’m sure the company counts on this. I have sent them a 90 day notice that I will report them to the SEC (they are listed on the NYSE) but I suspect that’s the best I can do. To further confuse things, I live in the US and the company is in Canada.
I had a similar situation. After my husband died, I went through some old documents and found a couple of stock certificates. Most were unusable because the companies no longer existed, but one was for a tiny British company that had been absorbed into a giant multinational that was still being traded. The 200 shares were purchased for about $50 in the 1950s and as far as I could calculate, are now worth over $200,000!
My daughter had her husband’s corporate lawyers look over the certificates and they said it looked like they were genuine. So we sent an inquiry to “giant multinational corporation” and they want us to mail the ORIGINAL certificates to them to validate. No, and no, and no.
So there the matter rests. No one in my family needs the $ enough to take a chance on the hassle. I told her maybe she can donate the certificates to a charity with a large legal team (e.g. ACLU or Planned Parenthood) and let them decide whether to battle it out.
So I expect that even if you are able to get the company to consider your request, they will also want the original certificates. Good luck on ever getting them back.
[Moderating]
Welcome to the board, @SusanS . Please be mindful of the fact that this is a question best-suited for a professional, and specifically a professional who’s well-versed in the laws and policies of the place where you live. On an anonymous message board, you have no way of actually knowing the knowledge, expertise, or qualifications of anyone offering you advice. As a way of emphasizing that fact, around here, we put all threads asking for professional advice in the IMHO forum, rather than in the Factual Questions forum. I’ll move this over there for you.
As you know, it will likely cost you many multiples of the $11k in legal fees and expenses to try to get this matter resolved. I’m not sure there’s much you can do. If you don’t mind doing a bit of work, you might be able to look through the old filings when they did the takeover to ensure they sent out notices. It’s unlikely that they skipped that step, but you never know.
Your situation reminds me of countries where they go through a currency conversion. There’s only a certain amount of time for people to bring in their physical currency to have it converted to the new currency. Lots of currency becomes worthless because someone didn’t take the money from under their mattress to get converted.
Double post
I wouldn’t be so dismissive of sending in the certificate. Keep a copy of the certificate and send the original with a letter indicating why you are sending it (maybe include a copy of their letter to the attorney telling you to do this) via FedEx and make sure it has to be signed for. They aren’t going to either send you money or give you equivalent stock without the certificate. I just had to do this with another company that had since been absorbed. I had at least 3 other stock certificates of companies that had been bought by others and all except this stinker in Canada just exchanged them and put them in my name once they had the originals and proof of DH’s death. It just doesn’t seem right that they can take the money without having to prove that they notified you.
Wow, that’s interesting that you got most of them to honor the certificates. I’d be happier if we could just take the certificate to their lawyers & let them examine it without relinquishing the original. I’ll talk with my daughter & see whether she had done anything yet.
Since the company is in Canada, wouldn’t you have to report them to the Canadian equivalent of the SEC? Seems like the SEC could elect not to get involved. You are probably SOL given that it’s a different country & the elapsed time.
Anyhow, if you are able to get resolution I’d sure be interested in the outcome!
Several years ago I was going through a large box of papers and photographs my parents had “inherited” from my grandfather’s 1st cousin, she wasn’t married, no kids, no siblings, and my parents were the only family that ever really visited her. I found a stock certificate for a uranium mine in Canada. Took it to my stock broker and he said without a CUSIP(?) number on the certificate it would be very difficult to prove it was an actual stock certificate despite looking like a genuine one.
The stock certificate was in a large envelope with a bunch of other papers. Interesting reading. The envelope contained extensive correspondence to some relatives of mine, way down the line from me, from the mid-to-late 1950s discussing this uranium mine and the progress the company had made in getting this mine up and running, maps of the mine, reassuring stock holders that everything was going as planned, etc… Then final correspondence, mailed from New York City instead of a town in Canada where the other correspondence came from, was the company saying they had been bought out by another mining company and that was the end of the paperwork timeline.
I have done a Google search of both mining companies and nothing specific come up as either are still in business today. Thought about contacting the town that the bulk of the correspondence came from and seeing if they have a historical society that could give some information on the company.
Isn’t there usually a limited time period to “cash in” the certificates in the old company for shares in the new one?
I’m guessing that outside of that, they’ll tell you you’re out of luck.
That is a unique alphanumeric code that identifies the security.
The UK has fairly frequent changes of currency, but there is always provision for those who find some under grandma’s mattress to take the notes to a bank and have them exchanged.
I have a white five-pound note from 1951, which I could exchange for five current pounds. I would do better on eBay, though, as they seem to be fetching between £100 and £200.
I am not in any way an expert on such matters, but since the company is in Canada I would think the jurisdiction of the SEC would be limited to any improprieties related to their listing on the NYSE and not much else. In Canada, stock regulation is a provincial matter, although coordinated by a national consortium called the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA). For a company headquartered in Ontario, for instance, you would go to the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC). Also potentially helpful for resolving complaints is the OBSI – the Ombudsman for Banking Services and Investments, although they seem mainly oriented to resolving disputes with banking and investment firms. If the company is in Ontario your best bet is probably the OSC, the closest equivalent to the US SEC.
A time limit to redeem physical certificates is normal but you can still get the stock after the time has passed. If you missed any dividends during that time, you can still get those too.
If the company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, it almost certainly offered shares in the US at one time and most likely uses a transfer agent that is registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission in the US. I am assuming herein that such is the case.
The transfer agent would have sent a notice to the shareholder of record at the address of record at the time of the merger. If you have physical shares in your and your husband’s names, you both are the shareholder of record. (The process is different if these were shares held in a brokerage account). Have you moved since you bought the shares? If so, did you ever notify the transfer agent that you moved? That last bit seems unlikely if you had forgotten about these shares.
It is possible that the transfer agent never got a notification that you moved, so as far as the transfer agent is concerned, you and your husband still own the shares. To get them solely into your name, you must establish to the transfer agent’s satisfaction that you still have the stock certificates and that you inherited his interest. The transfer agent won’t accept copies of the stock certificates for this purpose so if that’s the boat you are in, you will probably have to send the original stock certificates to the transfer agent as they requested. Note that their entire business is handling stock transfers (whether on death or otherwise) so they are used to handling share certificates. It’s not that something bad can never happen but it’s rare and at some point, you just have to trust the process. Stock certificates you are too scared to redeem aren’t worth anything anyway.
If the transfer agent’s notice to you of the merger was returned to it, the transfer agent knows that it has a bad address for you. If so, the transfer agent is supposed to follow reasonable policies and procedures to update their shareholder record but, when the only contact information the transfer agent has is a bad address, the only process they follow is to send things to that bad address a few more times and then give up. After a few years, the transfer agent should treat the stock as abandoned property.
All 50 US states have abandoned property or “escheatment” laws that require financial companies like banks, broker-dealers, and transfer agents to turn unclaimed or abandoned property over to the state, usually after three years or so but the details vary from state to state. At that point, the rightful owner can still claim the assets from the state’s unclaimed or abandoned property registry. You can find the one you need here: State-by-State Reporting Information – National Association of Unclaimed Property Administrators (NAUPA) . Note that you need to look in the state where the address of record on the stock was.
Because you shouldn’t trust what you read on the internet, you can get some more information from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission by contacting their Office of Investor Education and Advocacy here: https://www.sec.gov/about/divisions-offices/office-investor-education-advocacy
Unfortunately, you won’t hear back from them until the current government shutdown ends. Good luck.
There was no transfer agent because we directly held the stock certificate. My understanding is that once that happens it’s all between you and the company. No, we didn’t move. I agree that it’s important to get information from “the horse’s mouth” as it were. I appreciate all the info I’m getting here and will also check out the site you mentioned. Thanks!
Every public company has a transfer agent. When your husband got the stock certificate, he got it from the transfer agent that issued it.
There are a very few public companies (probably fewer than a dozen, I would guess and maybe not even that many) who serve a their own transfer agents. Even when a company serves as its own transfer agent, it still has to register as a transfer agent with the SEC. You need to figure out who the transfer agent is for this stock and deal with them.
There are five transfer agents listed on this page: https://www.drsgme.org/find-your-transfer-agent
If you search each of the five transfer agents for your stock, I will bet that you will find it listed. Then, contact that transfer agent.
Thanks for your info. As you can see, the whole thing of holding an actual stock certificate is “Greek” to me. I did investigate the info you gave me as well as investor relations for the stock and Computershare, who I’ve dealt with successfully on other stocks, is the transfer agent. I suppose it makes sense to call them and speak with someone there who deals with the Sprott account. I’m just not up for another three hours sitting on hold as I have in the past when I’ve wanted to speak with a person only to be told, we weren’t working for them at the time the takeover happened so it’s nothing to do with us. That said, I probably won’t find out unless I do it.
US law so might not apply elsewhere. Is it legal for a company, when they buy out another one, to say, “You have one year to transfer this into our stock. After that it is worthless.”? I wouldn’t think so.
The business they took over was Canadian, which they are too. In a case like this I would think that it’s their responsibility to prove, when asked, that they provided or at least made good faith efforts (i.e. have evidence that mail was returned, etc) to contact holders. I have no reason to believe they ever contacted us. My husband would not have let this go if he knew there was a takeover happening.
Have you lived at the same address since the certificate was issued? If not, perhaps the company tried to contact you but didn’t have your current address.
Yes we have lived in the same place for the past 30 years.