Selling shares still in name of executors (me)

plumpplop

Please help and be gentle with me as I am new to this.  I'm afraid I have rather ignored this issue over the years. 
When my father died in 1998 he had a small, single company share holding and the cost of selling the shares at the time was about 20% of the value , which seemed excessive so held onto them.  The dividends were paid into the executor account, which I also sort of forgot about and now the bank wants to close.  
Now I have checked the value of the share holding and its now over £6k so I would like to sell.
All my Dads death papers are, I assume, in the attic somewhere together with the share certificate. But we may have thrown them out when we moved. 
I have checked and I can get a copy of the grant of Probate and the Death Certificate.  I am in touch with the other executor and he agrees to the sale. How do I sell the shares without a certificate.  I have the shareholder number.
I also understand that I need to sell the shares soon or there may be a capital gain to declare.
Thanks in advance for any pointers you can give.

wmb194

plumpplop said:

Please help and be gentle with me as I am new to this.  I'm afraid I have rather ignored this issue over the years. 
When my father died in 1998 he had a small, single company share holding and the cost of selling the shares at the time was about 20% of the value , which seemed excessive so held onto them.  The dividends were paid into the executor account, which I also sort of forgot about and now the bank wants to close.  
Now I have checked the value of the share holding and its now over £6k so I would like to sell.
All my Dads death papers are, I assume, in the attic somewhere together with the share certificate. But we may have thrown them out when we moved. 
I have checked and I can get a copy of the grant of Probate and the Death Certificate.  I am in touch with the other executor and he agrees to the sale. How do I sell the shares without a certificate.  I have the shareholder number.
I also understand that I need to sell the shares soon or there may be a capital gain to declare.
Thanks in advance for any pointers you can give.

Which company? You need to find the name of its registrar - probably Computershare or Equiniti - and contact it and go through the process of having the ownership changed and the certificate replaced, which probably won't be cheap. After that you can have the registrar sell them for you - usually a rip-off - or you use a broker like x-o.co.uk, lodge your certificate with it in a nominee account and then sell the shares for c.£5.95.

plumpplop

Thanks.  The company is Rentokil and the share are in the name of the estate so I don't think we will have to change the name just reactivate the estates bank account so the proceeds can go to that account. I think the registrar is Equiniti. I'll try calling them.  Thanks for the help. 

[Deleted User]

Hi,

have a look HERE, scroll down to FAQs.

tetrarch

I'd have a good look for the certificate if I were you, the fees for your lost certificates would be £104




Including a £50 admin fee

The next issue will be actually selling the shares. Equiniti offer a share sale service but their charges are very high as well.

If you have any kind of brokerage account then transferring the shares into your name and selling is a straightforward process but includes another - (this time free) form with equiniti and then another form to get it into your broker's account

Regards

Tet

plumpplop

Thank you for all your comments and advice.  I'm not planning in buying or selling shares in the future so have no brokerage account to use.  I seem to remember back in the day the total fee for selling the shares was around £200 on a value of around £600 (nothing electronic in those days and also needed to set up account) so that is why we didn't sell then.  So total fees for sale and copy of certificate 25 years later of around £200 seems a bargain(!).
Equiniti have asked to see the Grant of Probate and a letter from the executors.  For info copy of the Grant was easy to obtain from the gov.uk website.  Just need to meet up with other executor (one and a half hours away)  to sign a letter of instruction to Equiniti.
Thanks again for your help.