Shares and Capital gains tax - please help

TotallyBroke

I work for a company that is being bought. Now although this doesn't directly affect me it is worrying a few people that work with me.

General gist of what is happening/happened....

A company (A) decided they wanted to buy (B) the company I work for. At an amount that undervalued the company, according to the Board of Directors. From the moment this happened the Board told everyone not to sell their shares and to reject the offer. Company (A) kept moving the goalposts and the dates kept getting further apart. Firstly they wanted to have 90% of shareholders agree to the take over and this was supposed to have been decided by end of September.
The Monopolies got involved and decided that the takeover could happen but certain parts of the business would have to be sold so that company (A) didn't have the monopoly in that particular field of expertise. This was agreed and company (A) set a deadline date of tomorrow and decided they only needed 75% of shareholders to agree. (At this time they already had 61%)

On Friday the Board told us to still reject the offer company (A) were offering.
Now this morning we have come in to a notice from the board telling us to accept the offer!!!
Getting to the point is that company (A) want to give the shareholders a part cash part share deal.
For every 1 share of company (B) they will give you £1.73 and 0.1883 of a company (A) share. Now what is worrying is that we have been told it is very unlikely anyone will get 100% cash or 100% company (A) shares for their company (B) shares. So for people who have an awful lot of company (B) shares they will have to pay Capital gains tax on this.

In laymans terms is there anything that these people can do so that they do not lose an awful lot of money. Thanks

TotallyBroke

Sorry a shameful bump but I've slipped to page 3 already as there are so many ICE threads

TotallyBroke

Another bump only am on page 10 this morning.

Please can someone advise. Thanks

cheerfulcat

TotallyBroke wrote: »

Getting to the point is that company (A) want to give the shareholders a part cash part share deal.
For every 1 share of company (B) they will give you £1.73 and 0.1883 of a company (A) share. Now what is worrying is that we have been told it is very unlikely anyone will get 100% cash or 100% company (A) shares for their company (B) shares. So for people who have an awful lot of company (B) shares they will have to pay Capital gains tax on this.

In laymans terms is there anything that these people can do so that they do not lose an awful lot of money. Thanks

Hi there,

You'd probably be best asking this in the tax forum, LINK. From a quick read of your post I don't think that anyone should lose an awful lot, though - remember that CGT only applies to gains, not the whole amount.