Help!!! - Can they leave me with shares in a company that no longer exists???

muppet75

Hi Im new to this site and am hoping someone can help me.
I have an online share trading account that I have not used in a while, but still had shares sitting in it. One of the companies I owned shares in was Goshawk insurance that was bought out in September of last year (I had about £500 in shares)
My broker sent me a letter in about June or July of last year asking if I accepted or declined the takeover proposal, due to the small amount of shares that I held I did not respond as I assumed that my vote did not matter.
The deadline was September 08 and since then I have waited for my account to be credited with the buyout figure. As this did not materialise I contacted the broker – they said they would investigate and get back to me(this was about 1 month ago) I did not receive a response so I contacted them again today and was informed that because I did not respond to the letter my shares had not been bought and that I would not get any money back for them!! – Call me naive but I was under the impression that when a company was taken over ALL the shares had to be bought up – is this correct??? The Goshawk shares still show on my account but I am unable to trade them as they are no longer listed on the stockmarket!!
I questioned what would have happened if I had declined the offer and was informed that I would have still not received any money for the shares – surely this is not logical??????
I informed the girl at the broker that I would investigate further and if necessary get in touch with the ombudsman. She said she would investigate further at her side and let me know the result.
She phoned back 10 min later and said that they would get in touch with the company that bought out Goshwark and ask them if they would still buy the shares and they would be back in touch in due course.
Is this how it works or are they just trying it on?
During buyout of a company can they buy all the shares of the people who reply accepting the proposal and leave the ones that don’t agree or don’t respond with shares in a non existent company?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanks in advance

Lokolo

They only need something like 90% (I can't remember the exact figure) to force a buyout of shareholders.

muppet75

thanks Lokolo I understand that, but surely that does not mean that they dont buy the remaining 10%???

tradetime

Sounds like an odd situation, I have not come across this before, don't suppose you have any of the original paperwork that would have accompanied the offer and detailed the terms of the takeover. Normally if you were "offered" a buyout and decline or fail to take up the offer you end up with shares of the new company. In other cases you are forced to sell, as in you have no choice, I have not heard of your situation before, who took them over?

Is this them?
http://www.idnewscentre.com/idnewscentre/browseCompanies.html;jsessionid=764D8FB321ECD5B1D02D0E5FE3D363EB?meta_name=Goshawk%20Insurance%20Holdings

muppet75

Hi tradetime.
I have just been looking for the proposal info, but unfortunatly I no longer have it. My understanding was the same as yours (that I would be forced to sell) hence I just left it to run its course.
None of what the broker says seems logical or ethical to me - why leave someone with a pile of shares which they can not do anything with?
yes the link looks like the one!

tradetime

Seems odd to me, but then I have never been in that particular position before. The purchasing company Enstar Holdings is a Nasdaq listed company, it seemed to be a straight forward buyout I would have thought you should have been paid the offer price regardless. Who is your broker?

muppet75

The broker is Hoodless Brennan.

http://www.hoodlessbrennan.com

tradetime

muppet75 wrote: »

The broker is Hoodless Brennan.

http://www.hoodlessbrennan.com

I believe they are held in fairly high regard around here.

FLEX24

A quick google gave me:
http://www.northcote.co.uk/company_links/by_sector.asp?SIT=1&SID=20&SDL=NI01249 and
http://app.quotemedia.com/quotetools/newsStory.go?storyId=11475076&topic=ESGR&symbology=null&cp=null
The registrars for Goshawk are/were Capita Registrars, I would ring the General Registration Communication number here:
http://www.capitaregistrars.com/shareholders/contact/
and see if they have more information.