Georgeson shareholder

catz1ct

Probably about a month.

maggip

I checked out Georgeson online after receiving one of these letters, and I found 2 websites, both link to the other (I checked each web address against the links in 2 browser windows) & one detailed the three companies mentioned - B&B, Standard Life & Scottish Power.
As my name is very unusual indeed I called Georgeson for further info.
They clearly already had my date of birth (they were able to give me the right part of the right decade, and the right part of my month of birth) and they quoted the first 2 digits of my National Insurance number although I didn't confirm that this was correct or give them the rest of it.
They did let me know that their inquiry related to Standard Life, which was correct although I had forgotten the provider for that pension plan, so I called Standard Life direct.
Standard Life then gave me a different number to call which refers to Georgeson/Standard Life shareholder tracing.
It doesn't sound like you can claim these shares any other way than through Georgeson as you need the claim form that Georgeson are supplying but I will give it another try via Standard Life.
Proceed with caution but it does seem that this is above board.

redbeard2000

I have worked for many years as a financial administrator and I can assure you Georgeson is a legitimate operation.

When a corporate action is undertaken (new certificates issued, takeover proceeds paid, etc) there will be a number of shareholders who do not receive their shares or cash. Maybe they have moved, or died, or their post was not delivered.

Some share registrars maintain what they call a Dissenters List for these queries. Other registrars farm these out to firms like Georgeson, who undertake the work to trace the shareholder. They depend on public records, which can have gaps or historic errors, so don't be alarmed at first if they seem to be targeting old/wrong addresses and names.

As for the postcode query, I notice they do not have a postal address on their website. I understand why this and the number of different postcodes can raise doubts, but it's all to do with how they want to streamline operations and divert communications via email or telephone. They are part of Computershare, which is based at The Pavilions in Bristol. It's a huge organisation and the different postcodes assist with sorting the post, simple as that.

Finally, there may indeed be scam artists posing as Georgeson. You will notice all the legitimate folks at Georgeson want to do is reunite you with your money, although at a commission which they deduct from what they send out. They do not need money up front and anyone who does is indeed a conman.

If you can prove to Georgeson you have not changed addresses since the original corporate action, you are entitled to ask for the cash commission-free. It's probably not your fault you did not receive the details of the original corporate action.

coronasv

I recieved a letter today from Georgeson and after reading this thread I checked out the Standard Life website. Below is a direct quote from there.


"Standard Life has launched a campaign with specialists, Georgeson, to help reunite around 200,000 individuals with over £184 million of unclaimed demutualisation entitlements.
In July 2006, The Standard Life Assurance Company demutualised and Standard Life plc floated on the London Stock Exchange. At the time, we sent information about the demutualisation entitlement to our 2.4 million eligible members, however, some people didn’t respond.
The campaign will focus on finding individuals based in the United Kingdom (UK), the Republic of Ireland, Canada, Germany and Austria. The campaign will continue until November 2009. "
Further detail at:
http://www.standardlife.com/shareholders/unclaimed.html

So yes they seem to be a genuine company but you can expect that they will want to be paid for their services in the form of a percentage of your unclaimed shares/premiums. Seems a lot cheaper to make the call direct yourself if you can work out which company it is.

coronasv

Further to my last entry, I used this number

mkellerman wrote: »

For Standard Life, you can call 0131 270 9060

And about 10 minutes later I was 430 shares better off (plus premiums)
At the market value at that time, using Georgeson would have cost me about £86. Thats an expensive phone call!

catz1ct

Nice to hear the story from the other side for a change. If it wasn't for these companys some people would never get their money.

Memories_2

I used to work for Gerogesons years and years ago. Essentially, Georgeson as a company was purchased by Computershare some time ago (2003?) but Computershare continue to maintain the brand. As a company Computershare is one of, if not the, largest registrar in the world.

While I was working there, the service that many of you are referring to was really their bread and butter - giving money to people who were owed it but in most cases had absolutely no idea, and taking a comission. This was often also referred to as a cleanup program (popular following mergers). Companies had so many shareholders with 1, 10 or 100 shares that they simply couldnt contact or werent of any significant value, and Georgeson provided a service whereby they would either a) identify these shareholders and update their details or b) find these shareholders and give them cash for their entitlement, and as such remove them from the register.

That involved getting a database from the company in question with as much shareholder information as possible and using various research tools (like software associated with an old voters register and other fancy things - or even simply the phone book!) to try and track people down The problem was, the data we often got from the listed company in question was sparce at best. Hence why some of these letters are so vague. There are also some legal issues with calling someone up and going "Joe Brown is owed £150 by Standard. Are you him?" following which someone might go "£150? WHy yes, I sure am Joe Brown". The same applies for written communication. Replace Joe Brown with whatever your name might be. If you ever get any of these calls or letters you may naturally be inclined to ask "how much money? who from?" and the answer just cant be given. So yes, it comes off as bloody suspicious. As someone that actually had the opportunity to get involved in the "research" process of finding people, we used to call people with the same last name, their relatives, people that were now staying at the address we had been given- on average it took at least 5 communications amongst various people to try and find someone. Often more, and hardly ever less.

At the end of it all we'd go back to company in question and say "we've reduced this database by 20/40/80%, given back this much cash, updated this much detail etc" I dont know how things work currently but we used to offer this service to companies for FREE. For a free service, that was pretty fancy and great value for the listed company. The only income for Georgesons was from the commision it obtained from the shareholder. To be honest, most people, especially the smaller shareholders, were overjoyed to be sent a check for £200 that they totally totally were not expecting. In some cases we managed to get this cash sent to family of a deceased shareholder.

Now getting back to the address - Computershare has several offices all over the UK. The headoffice is at The Pavilions in Bristol. Its a massive facility for yes, more than 2000 people, that I believe used to be an electrical station of some sort? Not sure - its in the middle of nowhere though and I worked there for a while.

As regards the various numbers they have, aside from these cleanup programs which were usually the proving grounds for Georgeson before being able to charge a client for other programs like Proxy Solicitation, Geargeon ran shareholder information lines as well as other programs, and to facilitate this (and the reporting for each campaign) we'd set up different numbers for different clients - sometimes several depending on how many programs were being run. Having 1 number just isnt practical because if you were to call that, you'd have several hundred options to choose from, 99.9% of which were totally irrelevant to you. And trust me on this, reception would have NO idea what you were on about - the scale is simply too large. Instead you call that Companies particular number, and get to choose whether you are calling about the Cleanup Program, The Proxy Solicitation letter you recieve, or general Shareholder information (like how to invest, or find out what the share price is today etc) all relevant to that company.

Purchasing Georgeson Shareholder (when things started to go a bit bandy for the latter) was a good move on Computershares part (purely in my opinion) as it allowed them to offer the companies who's shareholder lists they were maintaining, other complimentary products and services - which they needed to do, because Computershare is a giant of a company and needed to either evolve or decline, and it appears they are doing the former. I no longer work at the company and haven't for the last 4 or so years, so cant say how things work at the moment - but I hope this sheds some light on the matter for those of you with some concerns

Lastly, if you do have some cash owed to you, you dont have to pay the commision if you are prepared to take on the task of getting it back yourself. Georgesons however will ensure that you dont have to wade through a forestfire to get it, and save you much time and headache. For £10 of your £100 entitelment that you never even knew you had? Go on...

petebee_2

i recieved a similar letter to those mentioned, what security questions need to be answered before your claim is processed, it seems a bit of a shotgun approch in tracking people , how can they confirm you are the genuine claimant?

catz1ct

Various questions.

seen_the_light_2

If i contact standard life directly and do not use georgesons ( they wrote to me but i did an internet search as i thought it was a scam and so have nmade no contact with Georgesons) will i still have to pay georgesons commission ? I answered various questions with Standard life on the phone and have indicated i want to sell the shares. Has anyone experience of how long it will take from when i post the forms back to Standard Life to actually recieving the money. Im going on holiday in 5 weeks time and it will really come in handy. Also, am i likely to get the outstanding dividends in cheque form in advance of the sale of the shares ? YIPPEE............YIPPEE............