If a company I have shares in changes its' listing from London to New York?

IDontSpeakFrench

Hi all. I am struggling to find conclusive facts online about what happens with shareholdings in a London listed PLC, if that company decides to delist from LSE and skips over to NYSE instead. As a UK citizen, resident, tax payer, I'm worried I will be hit with some kind of huge tax bill when I sell my shares at retirement. Can anyone recommend a reliable, factual, source of information, please? The background is:- I worked for a long time, here in the UK, for a very large Anglo-Dutch multinational. Over the years I bought shares each month in my employer, through their Employee Share Option Purchase scheme, and a few times I was granted some Performance Bonus shares too. I no longer work for them, my shares have 'vested', I have never sold any. I was saving them for my soon arriving retirement. Recently, there are reports that the company plans to switch its' listing to NYSE. I can't find any concrete info on what the implications would be for small personal investors, if they go ahead and do that. Suggestions of trustworthy info sources about this type of situation would be much appreciated. Kind Regards.

Hoenir

Moving the brass plate i.e. the registered office of the company to another country. Doesn't mean that the shares won't still be listed on various foreign stock exchanges. 

IDontSpeakFrench

Thanks. So, do you mean; even if their primary listing becomes NYSE, they may still have secondary listings in London and Amsterdam?

MDMD

Presumably this is Shell? As above they will probably maintain a secondary listing in the UK.

Whether it is wise to rely on the value of company for retirement when you don’t have management control is another question.

Over half the shares are held by US investors with one of the two largest holding more than UK retail investors combined.

https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/why-the-dam-would-break-if-shell-quit-the-ftse/ar-BB1lAQci

Hoenir

IDontSpeakFrench said:

Thanks. So, do you mean; even if their primary listing becomes NYSE, they may still have secondary listings in London and Amsterdam?

Yes............ HSBC has secondary listing in Hongkong and Bermuda.  Rio Tinto is dual-listed on both the London Stock Exchange and the Australian Securities Exchange,

Keep_pedalling

Holding a large chunk of your savings in a single company is very high risk, and if the shares are sitting outside of a pension or ISA you will potentially already have a substantial CGT liability if your plan is to sell the lot in one go. 

I would look at move to offload these shares for less risky investments preferably in a pension. What is the current value of your holding and how far away from retirement are you? 

El_Torro

I agree that there is little benefit in keeping these shares.  I would sell them and move the money to a global tracker or other suitable fund (preferably in a pension or Stocks & Shares ISA). Of course your shares might outperform a fund but at least in a fund you have a lot more diversity (and subsequently less risk). 

I also agree that you need to see how to do this while paying not too much Capital Gains Tax.

Nardy

IDontSpeakFrench said:

Hi all. I am struggling to find conclusive facts online about what happens with shareholdings in a London listed PLC, if that company decides to delist from LSE and skips over to NYSE instead. As a UK citizen, resident, tax payer, I'm worried I will be hit with some kind of huge tax bill when I sell my shares at retirement. Can anyone recommend a reliable, factual, source of information, please? The background is:- I worked for a long time, here in the UK, for a very large Anglo-Dutch multinational. Over the years I bought shares each month in my employer, through their Employee Share Option Purchase scheme, and a few times I was granted some Performance Bonus shares too. I no longer work for them, my shares have 'vested', I have never sold any. I was saving them for my soon arriving retirement. Recently, there are reports that the company plans to switch its' listing to NYSE. I can't find any concrete info on what the implications would be for small personal investors, if they go ahead and do that. Suggestions of trustworthy info sources about this type of situation would be much appreciated. Kind Regards.

Look on the bright side, if Shell management achieve their objectives, the shares will increase in value.

https://www.theguardian.com/business/nils-pratley-on-finance/2024/apr/11/is-shell-trying-to-kill-the-london-stock-market

I am in a similar situation except I never worked for Shell though I did work in the gas industry for about 15 years and about 10 years ago Shell took over BG, the oil business owned by British Gas. The shares I acquired from Share Save schemes were automatically paid into PEPs which became ISAs, while shares that I hade received as part of an annual salary increase I owned outright. I did the same as you and forgot about them until retirement. Either side of the tax year end and start dates in 2022 I sold most of the shares that were not in an ISA without incurring CGT.