shares transfer help

stavros2013

I am not sure what is best course of action ??
I have just retired and about to take ownership of my company shares (US company) that were held in trust in a long term company sharesave scheme.I now have to take out the shares as I am no longer employed.
I have 2 options :-
1 to transfer to my own name cost £50 or
2 transfer to a UK share broker £23.50
I was going to transfer to my own name then get a broker to let me put £20k in a stocks and shares ISA and just keep the rest ?
If I transfer the lot to a broker they will put £20k in an isa then not sure what funds to invest the rest in ?
Dont want to sell the shares ?
So I dont know what a I should do ?
HELP ???

AnotherJoe

The issue you'll have if you want to put the shares into an ISA is that you'll have US shares which you'll need to sell, transfer the money to pounds, transfer that to an ISA and then rebuy in dollars. At a guess that will lose you 15%-20% straight off.


Also, when you say "transfer to my own name" do you mean paper certificates? Thats a lot of hassle you dont want especially with US shares.


My suggestion. Transfer to a UK broker, over time buy whatever other investments you want inside your S&S ISA and keep your US shares (which you dont currently want to sell) as is for the time being. If you pick the right broker, when you sell these US shares you can keep the proceeds in dollars and then use them to buy more US shares without needing to do currency conversion.You cant do that inside an ISA.

jaybeetoo

You can’t be the first person in your company to have this problem. What do others do?

AlanP_2

stavros2013 wrote: »

Dont want to sell the shares ?

That's a brave call you are making there.

How much risk you are taking depends on your overall financial situation about which we know nothing but any single company share investment is high risk.

Something I read recently regarding the make up of the S&P Index:

"While there has been relatively less turnover lately, with only 3% of the companies changing since 2013, the cumulative effect of adding and subtracting companies is surprisingly substantial. Ten percent of the companies in today's index are different since 2011, 17% are different since 2009, and fully half the companies are different since 1999."

The majority of those 250 companies that have exited the S&P 500 over the last 19 years haven't done so because their performance has been so good that they have been promoted to a different Index. They have either failed entirely, steadily lost ground to other companies / sectors or been taken over.

What do you see as the big benefit of retaining your shares in a single US company?

greenglide

I worked for a large US company. They had an option scheme - one whereby you signed up, paid no money and at the end could either buy shares at the original price or walk away.


At launch of the scheme the share price was over $100, at the point at which the option could be exercised the share price was below $20.


Surprisingly nobody exercised their option!