Small Value Canadian Cheque

ey_up

Hi all,

Not sure if this is the best forum to post in but here goes, I hold a small amount shares in a company listed on the Torrento stock exchange. The holding came about as a result of a take over of a UK listed company and now I hold a share certificate rather than held electronically under nominee. Anyway, this company has started paying dividends, first being only $7 Canadian.

Firstly, can anyone suggest what the fees would be for banking this at either HSBC or Halifax would be? I couldnt see directly on the website.

Secondly, does anyone know the likely fees to dispose of the shares? I have asked the company directly whether they have a scheme to assist small share holders but they dont.

Finally, does anyone know any UK stock brokers that would allow me to hold this electronically? I dont really fancy selling unless I have to but not getting dividends just doesnt make sense.

Thank you in advance for any comments.

Thank you

bigadaj

I think the charges will exceed the value if that cheque.

No experience of foreign share dealing but there is a list of brokers on moneysupermarket, you'd probably have to look at several in detail on their website to get an idea of charges.

Waht value of shares do you hold as it would make more sense to dispose of a small holding and invest in uk shares or funds.

bowlhead99

I hold shares from a variety of different countries in my account at TD Direct Investing.

If you have a non-ISA version of the trading account, it comes with a multicurrency cash account so any income or sales proceeds received are held in the same currency until you use it to buy more shares or funds in that currency or choose to manually flip it to sterling (they charge 2% on conversions). If you have an ISA account (which isn't allowed to hold foreign currencies), then they just convert incoming proceeds on the fly and give you the sterling. Certainly easier than getting a cheque in the post and trying to get a bank to manually clear it into a UK sterling account.

I don't pay any annual account maintenance fees with TD because I qualify for the fee waivers (there are a variety of ways to qualify). However if you were a small customer who only had a few hundred pounds worth of shares with them and weren't making regular monthly contributions or trades, you would get hit with inactivity fees which would certainly cost more than the dividends which you are currently missing out on (i.e. by holding directly rather than electronically, causing you to get useless cheques in the post).

My smallest foreign holding is about 360 shares of an Australian listed company (it was a spinout from an AIM company years ago), where each share is valued at about half an aussie cent. So I have AUD 1.79 of value in that company. But because it's not costing me anything to have it in my account, I haven't bothered to do anything with it. I should have sold when they were worth £15 and taken the fiver after fees. They may eventually recover back up to that level or disappear.

What I will probably do with some holdings like this eventually is just gift them over to charity (TD arrange this via ShareGift if your shares are in their nominee accounts). If your shares are in paper you can go to sharegift themselves direct (http://www.sharegift.org/).

However if you are getting $7 dividends then you might have a few hundred dollars of value that you don't want to just throw away (to a good cause) and so your options are:

- find a broker who will let you transfer in your paper certificates for a non-UK listed company for nothing and then sell them at a reasonable fee and then abandon the broker without paying any admin fees or account closure fees. If you can.

- find a broker that handles foreign shares, sell these ones, and move some or all of your other shares or funds business to him and use his ongoing services so you don't attract ongoing admin fees or attract account closure charges for appearing and disappearing quickly (many low fee providers would have that type of thing unfortunately).

- keep the shares in paper form in a cupboard or safe and accept you are never going to get any value out of the divis but will perhaps end up with a higher value for the shares themselves in years to come at which point they can be sold more efficiently.

I think in your position a lot of people would just do the last option, keep them and see what happened in the hope of a gain - but of course it might be worth paying an annoying fee to a broker to exit properly rather than hold until they become relatively less valuable.

ey_up

Hi. Thank you for your replies. Your comments mirror my expectations regarding fees exceeding value. I never expecting dividends on these shares only capital growth so decision time I think. I dont fancy the fees involved in transferring my whole portfolio to another provider and normally try to stick to UK shares but as various take overs have occurred I have found a few overseas listed shares. Thank you once again

atypical

ey_up wrote: »

Firstly, can anyone suggest what the fees would be for banking this at either HSBC or Halifax would be? I couldnt see directly on the website.

Barclays will do this for free (not sure why) where the value of the cheque is less than the equivalent of £50:
http://ask.barclays.co.uk/help/day2day_banking/foreign_cheque

HSBC charges £6 where the value is <£100:
https://www.hsbc.co.uk/1/PA_esf-ca-app-content/content/pws/content/personal/pdfs/general-price-list.pdf