Shares

zoe_pops_510

I’m writing this on behalf of my father in in-law. He has shares in a company he used to work for and someone has contacted him about selling them. How do we go about finding out how much the shares are worth? 

Tia 

doe808

What is the company name and how many shares does he have?

bowlhead99

If the company is listed on the stock exchange there will be a ready market for the shares, the current price could be found on London Stock Exchange website or any number of news sources (e.g. finance.google.co.uk).

If the company is privately owned and its shares don't trade on a public market, there is no daily published 'what are they worth' price., because there aren't lots of shares changing hands daily where you can see how much people are asking. Instead the 'fair value' is simply whatever arm's-length price a willing buyer would pay to a willing seller. Your father in law and the prospective buyer would do a deal somewhere between whatever minimum amount your father would accept for them and whatever maximum amount the other person would pay. 

You would use some rational basis to come up with your expectation, e.g. full ownership of all the shares in the company together might be valued at x times the annual profits made by the company or y times the revenue made by the company or z times the net assets owned by the company, coming up with the x , y or z based on what values other similar businesses have been bought or sold for (or some comparable listed company where share prices can be seen in the market). There are a whole variety of complicated methodologies that could be used. Once you know what you think the whole company is worth, you can decide what your piece (e.g. 0.5% of all the shares) is worth and how much you'd be willing to sell it for. 

If it's a private business that he no longer works for, it's likely that he has very limited access to information on how the company is getting on, because he won't have access to the recent financial records or budgets etc - other than what is published on Companies House website once a year and whatever else they are willing to tell him. So it can be quite tricky to get a fair price. Still, if he doesn't have any meaningful voting power with the few shares he holds, and the company is not paying any significant dividends, he might feel that anything is better than nothing.

Notepad_Phil

Who is the person who has contacted him, someone related to the company?

If they're not then personally I'd want to know how this person found out about your father-in-law and even if they say they are related to the company then I'd want proof of who they were.

zoe_pops_510

The shares are with Robert Wisemen Dairies. The woman that contacted him about selling the shares is from New York from a company Bren Ventures. Any advice would be appreciated 

Thrugelmir

Robert Wisemen Dairies were taken over by the Muller Group in 2012. 

MDMD

It was an all cash offer, so he will no longer own the shares and should have been sent the proceeds around March 2012 (which is when the Listed holding company was delisted)

https://www.investegate.co.uk/unternehmensgruppe/rns/offer-for-robert-wiseman-dairies-plc/201201160700315812V/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-17285754