SVS Securities - shut down?

jenwrendorset

kencom said:

Advice required please.

I managed to FINALLY transfer all my cash & most of my holdings from ITI capital to my ii account, BUT i could not transfer 2 of my stocks due to the fact that they were suspended.

I’m hopeful these stocks will return to the market one day so I want to keep auditable possession of them. The trouble is I cannot get share certificates for either share & neither of these share companies are contactable.

When I transferred out of iti they could not transfer these shares, so I left my iti account open to keep the shares in that account.

I’ve contacted iti, but they have not replied.

Any advice greatly welcomed.

Same problem here.  I initially posted here on 25 July (Pg 627) and followed RasputinB's advice however I have received no response from ITI despite giving them a deadline, in fact two deadlines, the second runs out tomorrow.  I included the FCA in my correspondence just to keep them in the loop.  I did wonder about contacting Mark Bentley at ShareSoc, he provided alot of help to ex-SVS clients who were struggling to free themselves from ITI, I would be interested to hear his thoughts on this.  My emails to ITI requested that they return my delisted shares in certified form which I didn't expect to be charged for - I doubt a telephone call would prove any more fruitful but guess I will have to go down that route as well.  My understanding is that LC should not have transferred these shares to ITI because ITI do not deal with AIM-listed shares however over they went and now they are stuck.

jenwrendorset

eskbanker said:

Perhaps rhetorical, but has anyone been contacted by ITI regarding how they propose to handle such holdings, given the requirement for them to close all open positions by the end of this month?

Not a dicky bird

johnburman

I was wondering if you could complain to the London Stock Exchange but on their Website under Retail Brokers, ITI is not listed.

So it's a yet further complaint for compensation from the FOS: and here you are suffering a real loss so claim it.  Also of course tell the FSA  

eskbanker

johnburman said:

So it's a yet further complaint for compensation from the FOS: and here you are suffering a real loss so claim it.

It would be different if the shares ultimately had to be written off, but it's not clear to me how there's any real loss at this stage arising simply from a delay in accessing a delisted holding, i.e. where liquidating it wouldn't be an option regardless of which broker it sat with?  Yes, there's inconvenience, etc, but surely by now it should be well understood that the process is to raise a formal complaint with ITI initially, with later escalation to FOS only if necessary....

johnburman said:

Also of course tell the FSA  

As pointed out more than once before, the Food Standards Agency are unlikely to be interested....

johnburman

a)  I'm old - remember the FSA? It's the FCA of course

b) what u need is an entity who would buy the share from you and you can show that you can not sell them the shares.  But other than that it is difficult to put a cash figure on the value.. Yes you still have the inconvenince claim

c) if ITI does not answer your letters/complaints you can go direct to the FOS.  I did.  And when I did suddenly ITI responded to my letters....or rather they did not, but admitted that and then the FOS accepted the complaint  

eskbanker

johnburman said:

b) what u need is an entity who would buy the share from you and you can show that you can not sell them the shares.  But other than that it is difficult to put a cash figure on the value.

You were suggesting that there's already a real loss, which isn't about putting a value on the share holding, but would entail putting a value on the opportunity cost of not being able to trade it, which would generally be zero if the holding is delisted.

johnburman said:

c) if ITI does not answer your letters/complaints you can go direct to the FOS.  I did.  And when I did suddenly ITI responded to my letters....or rather they did not, but admitted that and then the FOS accepted the complaint  

I'm not sure there's value in going through all this yet again, but the FOS process can be triggered either eight weeks after a formal complaint is raised or after the receipt of a final response to that complaint that's deemed unsatisfactory, if earlier.  Your earlier comment about claiming compensation from the FOS didn't make it clear that there's an ITI process to follow first.

johnburman

The FOS will allow an earlier claim that you waiting the full 8 weeks if it si clear that you are being ignored by the company....with ITI I would have thought that the FOS would be aware of the position.

Either way make a claim on the FOS

We are agreed it is the issue is the actual damages you can claim, which in this case will involve inconvenience (£300 per client per account) and whatever the actual losses you suffer are.  A delisted share may have a value, although it is unlikely.  I suppose you must be able to prove it is worth £0 to offset it against your CGT gains for the year..but I'm not sure how you would go about that.

eskbanker

johnburman said:

The FOS will allow an earlier claim that you waiting the full 8 weeks if it si clear that you are being ignored by the company

The poster only instructed ITI two weeks ago, so hasn't even got to the stage of raising a complaint yet, never mind having that complaint ignored!

johnburman said:

with ITI I would have thought that the FOS would be aware of the position

Not sure what you mean by FOS 'being aware of the position' - obviously there have been some complaints but that doesn't mean it's open season for everyone/anyone to get urgent attention from FOS if it's an ITI complaint?

johnburman said:

We are agreed it is the issue is the actual damages you can claim, which in this case will involve inconvenience (£300 per client per account) and whatever the actual losses you suffer are.  A delisted share may have a value, although it is unlikely.  I suppose you must be able to prove it is worth £0 to offset it against your CGT gains for the year..but I'm not sure how you would go about that.

Personally I think it would be unlikely that FOS would consider delayed access to a delisted holding as anything like as serious as the major issues encountered in 2020/21 when clients were unable to get access to any of their assets, couldn't get them transferred out, etc, etc, so would be surprised if they felt that £300 would be appropriate for something minor like this.


As ever, I'm not defending ITI (or FOS) here and do sympathise with the frustration experienced by those still having to deal with ITI, but just feel that expectations often seem to be rather inflated....

masonic

The FOS would seek to put the customer into the position they would have been in if the firm had acted appropriately. In this case it would be that the shares in question get registered to the beneficial owner, or a nominee of their choice. If this cannot be done, then the situation is a little more complex, because there may be a loss that could have been crystallised at some point in the future and used against a tax bill (or a gain that would otherwise have triggered a CGT liability). This could lead to a tricky situation with HMRC if such a disposal needs to be declared. So we have the FCA requiring ITI to get these assets off its books, and the client/FOS wanting these assets moved off ITI's books. Everyone is in alignment. It is just a case of re-registering the shares, which should be possible even if suspended.

Interactive Investor (which was the broker the poster raising this issue transferred to) has some information about how they deal with such shares: https://www.ii.co.uk/help/trading/useful-information/defunct-shares

johnburman

Once again Masonic is right.  But a delisted share does not have "no value": only if the company is dissolved are the shares of no value.

Shares are usually but not *always* valueless if they are no longer listed on a stock exchange.