Rolls Royce 'C' shares in ATS ISA

Tystie

A warning to anybody with RR shares in the Alliance Trust Savings Stocks and Shares ISA.
After years getting 'B' then 'C' shares and not being charged to convert them to cash and/or shares, ATS has decided they are 'capital' and not 'income'. They therefore feel it necessary to charge £30 as a corporate action to redeem the 'C' shares. I am getting about £230 worth of 'C' shares so they are going to charge me about 13%.:mad:
I also have a few RR shares with Halifax Share Dealing. The last time I got about £54 worth of 'C' shares which they converted to 4 shares and £5 cash for free as they treated it as income.
If you get only a small allocation of 'C' shares - say £50 worth ATS will charge you 60% and if you only get £30 worth you will get nothing as you will be charged 100%.
If you get less than £30 you will be paying them!:(
So much for helping the small investor!

Anyone else come across this and how do we avoid it apart from selling out of RR or transferring the RR shares to another provider (no doubt at great expense)?

jimjames

Can you sell the whole holding and transfer to another provider? Cash is normally cheaper or free to transfer

barak

Tystie wrote: »

.....Anyone else come across this and how do we avoid it apart from selling out of RR or transferring the RR shares to another provider (no doubt at great expense)?

A useful posting! I haven't come across the problem as [thank goodness!] I still haven't moved my RR shares into my HSDL nominee account. You could convert yours into paper certificates and apart from the charge for doing so [looks like HSDL charge £35 - not sure about ATS], there wouldn't be any unavoidable further costs - as they are treated as a capital gain - apart from buying a larger filing cabinet!

Tystie

At the moment the problem only exists in ATS. I have complained to ATS and also contacted Rolls Royce. Not much help from the former and nothing yet from RR. The more small investors who complain the better.
I may revert to what I had before which is hold paper RR share certificates. I remember the need for a filing cabinet as I had a large collection of small share certificates. If I am saving £30 a pop I would soon recoup any of the costs transferring RR out of the ATS ISA and since I do not pay high tax rates the ISA is not really necessary.
If I can I could transfer the RR shares to my HSDA or start an ISA with HSD and transfer the RR holding but who knows when they may suddenly put the same charge on. Note that HSD has a £25 charge for each share holding transferred out.
Appreciate the advice so far and waiting to see if anybody else is in my situation.

Tystie

Today I received an e-mail from ATS to say that they are not going to apply the charge on this occasion. They implied there was more customer complaints than just myself. They also said that the matter was being referred to the section who determine the charges.
They also replied to my query re. cost of transferring out from ATS and hoped that I would not feel the need to take this path.
Complaining does work sometimes:-)