Canadian Bank Paper shares

mollie-rose8

I have Canadian banks shares in paper form (issued to me when I left there employ in London). I receive quite substantial dividends 4 times a year and I pay Canadian Withholding Tax (whatever that means!) Anyway, I am now looking to sell these. Where do I go now? Any help would be gratefully received.:beer:

SammenForLivet2

Have you tried to contact the Investor Relations department of the bank in question, to see if you can sell thru the Registrar (e.g: Capita/Computershare or Equinti)?

Are these stock listed on The Toronto Stock Exchange?

You may be required to goto a Canadian stock broker (make sure you've got your shareholder reference number) and transfer it to them, to sell it for you, and then arrange for them to wire the funds over to you, here in the UK.

It's probably going to be quite costly. Could you look at contacting on Tuesday some UK brokers, e.g: HL or Share Center and asking them politely on how to do this?

You're unlikely to get the best deal, but it may be a quick alternative. There may be other alternatives, but I'm just trying to help you, since your post has been unanswered for quite a while. I would recommend that you see if you get impartial financial advice, before making the sale, particularly based on the value of the shares.

mollie-rose8

Thanks for answering and will try and go the most cost effective way. I think its Capita but I'll check and ring them up. Yes, they are listed on The Toronto Stock Exchange. They are Royal Bank of Canada shares. Just one question, you say to get impartial advice, can you tell me where I would get this? .... If I've read their website properly, they were trading at approx CAD$73.00 yesterday, so very valuable. So appreciative of their scheme when I worked there.....pledged 3% of my salary per month which on average bought 1 1/2 shares per month and they (RBC) matched it.

bowlhead99

You do not need to obtain any impartial advice. You have already made the right choice. And if you already have the phyiscal paper certificate in your hand you do not need to contact the registrar to sell via another broker. But you might like to contact them anyway to see if they have an easy dealing service.

Different brokers would have different opinions whether shares of that particular bank is a better share for you as a person living in the UK to hold, compared to other banks around the world. Or compared to other companies around the world. But if you ask a broker whether you should sell or wait, he will typically not be genuinely impartial nor cognisant of your personal circumstances, and he cannot predict the future.

If you go to ANY truly independent financial advisor and say:

1) hey, all the 'stuff' I have in the world is £x cash and £x worth of house and £x worth of car and £x of toys and £y of investments and £z of shares in RBC.

2) And then tell them, re those RBC shares, I randomly picked them up during my life but I have no special insider knowledge about this specific company that operates in the international banking sector and why it would be any better than any other billion dollar company on the planet and whether in pounds sterling it will be even worth half as much this time next year as it is today.

Any independent adviser worth their salt would say, OK, sell those RBC shares immediately they have no place in your portfolio. Depending on how many you have, you might get $5000 or $15000 or whatever from them, good. Turn it back into pounds sterling which is the currency you live your life in.

Then, with your increased cash, decide what you would spend it on given a clean slate. Would you put it in a savings account? Maybe buy an investment, inside or outside an ISA or pension. If you buy an investment, it would likely be a fund of some sort, invested in lots and lots of underlying shares around the country or around the planet. Maybe one that produces an income or just one that hopes to go up in value over the long term. The very last thing you would be likely to do with it is buy shares in a single Canadian bank.

So, there is no point going anywhere or paying anything for 'impartial advice' over what to do with the shares. Because you already know what they would say if they were truly impartial. I am presuming you do not already have a huge portfolio worth hundreds of thousands of pounds with tens of different shares in it in lots of different companies around the world which you actively monitor. That's the only circumstance in which you would maybe keep them - but you don't come off as that kind of person and you are already happy to sell.

Actually, there is one further circumstance in which you might keep them. If the profit you make on the shares is a really high amount (like £11k+) you would have to pay tax on the excess profit over £11k that you cash in during any tax year. That might cause you to want to only sell some this year and some next year so you don't go over the gains tax limit in any one year.

However if you only worked there for say 5 years picking up 3 shares a month you don't even have as much as £11k proceeds let alone £11k profits (you were paying real money for the shares as you were going along) and so this is not a concern.

To sell, you just need a broker that deals in international shares. A couple at random would be SaxoBank or TD Direct Investing . Tell them you have some paper share certificates and you wish to sell them and get cash back in GBP and ask what the total fee would be. And ask them what commission they take on converting the CAD back to GBP. TD charge quite a high amount on currency conversion, I only mentioned them because I use them and know they deal in Canadian shares.

You might also be able to do it with the stockbroking service provided by your high street bank, e.g. Nat West. But not all brokers deal in overseas markets so it is worth asking before you bother filling out account opening forms.

Either way you will have to fill out some forms to open the account and then you can sell either online or over the phone.

Bear in mind that the value of the shares can move by a percent or more in a day. If it is a large amount of money (say £5000-£10000) that can be £50-£100 fluctuation. So, if you are happy to sell the shares now, there is absolutely no point in shopping around and waiting for five brokers to reply by email to your queries over the next week to save a tenner on dealing costs here and there.

The MSE way for a lot of things is to post some enquiries and take a few days to research and find the absolute cheapest way of doing things. However the lowest risk thing to do is to sell them immediately because if you hold them another week they could be worth a lot less than any fee savings. Of course, they could be worth more in a few weeks But you have already decided you want to sell them so what they might be worth next week or next year is irrelevant.