Help with disposing of shares

greengagegarden

I inherited shares from my father over 20 years ago and considered them family money and done little with them. I do not really understand much about shares and investing. When recently talking with friends about them and at my stage of life selling them rather than burdening my children with them they said I should consider the Capital Gains tax Implications.
 Subsequently I have looked up the implications and got a basic understanding. I have looked at share prices when I acquired the shares and what they are worth now in comparison but I don't know how to access the share prices of companies that are know longer in existence as they have been bought out by other companies eg I acquired shares in Amersham which were bought out by GEC. Please can someone point me in the correct direction of finding Historical share prices of companies no longer in existence so I can work out out my capital gain/loss

Marcon

greengagegarden said:

I inherited shares from my father over 20 years ago and considered them family money and done little with them. I do not really understand much about shares and investing. When recently talking with friends about them and at my stage of life selling them rather than burdening my children with them they said I should consider the Capital Gains tax Implications.
 Subsequently I have looked up the implications and got a basic understanding. I have looked at share prices when I acquired the shares and what they are worth now in comparison but I don't know how to access the share prices of companies that are know longer in existence as they have been bought out by other companies eg I acquired shares in Amersham which were bought out by GEC. Please can someone point me in the correct direction of finding Historical share prices of companies no longer in existence so I can work out out my capital gain/loss

Perhaps a useful first step might be checking if the share certificates have any validity/worth where companies have been bought out or taken over? 'Old' company shares don't necessarily equate to 'new' company shares. Point of contact for doing that is the (current) company's registrar, which should be easy enough to obtain by googling.

MX5huggy

Quick google shows GE paid £8 per Amersham share in 2003. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3179954.stm

You don’t own any shares, if you didn’t get the money in 2003, I’ve no idea if you could get hold of it 21 years later. 

wmb194

MX5huggy said:

Quick google shows GE paid £8 per Amersham share in 2003. 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3179954.stm

You don’t own any shares, if you didn’t get the money in 2003, I’ve no idea if you could get hold of it 21 years later. 

It was an all share deal so OP may still own shares in the US listed GE (not GEC as stated) or rather the companies it was broken into - GE Aerospace, GE Vernova and GE Healthcare.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB106574018488408500

wmb194

greengagegarden said:

I inherited shares from my father over 20 years ago and considered them family money and done little with them. I do not really understand much about shares and investing. When recently talking with friends about them and at my stage of life selling them rather than burdening my children with them they said I should consider the Capital Gains tax Implications.
 Subsequently I have looked up the implications and got a basic understanding. I have looked at share prices when I acquired the shares and what they are worth now in comparison but I don't know how to access the share prices of companies that are know longer in existence as they have been bought out by other companies eg I acquired shares in Amersham which were bought out by GEC. Please can someone point me in the correct direction of finding Historical share prices of companies no longer in existence so I can work out out my capital gain/loss

*GE. Do you know the probate valuation? That's what you need. Or don't worry about it and allow the CGT liability to be reset to zero when they pass to your children (when you pass it'll all fall under the value of your estate and under IHT).

Finding old share prices is hard, as soon as a company is acquired everything about them gets memory holed. Archived e.g., FT and Telegraph papers back in those days would have had pages of shares prices in them. Perhaps there's a way to find those? Obviously the LSE will also have the data somewhere.

Hoenir

If the companies are no longer in existance. Then , if applicable, you would have been issued with new share certificates in the new entity. Old share certificates have no value other than for collectors. What happened to the new share certificates ? Did you sell the investments at some point in time or transfer them into electronic nominee form on a platform. 

singhini

@greengagegarden
You sound like a friend of mine who recently inherited some shares and had no real idea of what shares and how many (about 4 years ago this was). 
Now this might work for you or might not but this is what my friend did in establishing what he had inherited. 

He looked at one of the share certificates in his name (National Grid) and it said something like "the company Equinity are the online share portal administrator company they deal with" 
So he rang Equinity and gave them the certificate number and they said "yes we can see you have shares with that company". He mentioned one or two other companies he had shares in and they said "yes we can see them too, and we can see you have shares with company A and company B aswell).

I think what he did was set up an account with Equinity and registered the share certificate for National Grid and then National Grid sent him an activation code. 
Once the account with Equinity was activated, he was able to import all the shares he had with all the companies (5 in total i think) and they all appeared within the one online account (you also have to register your bank account details against each company shares so the dividends can be paid directly into your bank account as they don't bother sending out paper cheques anymore).  

Once you have an understanding of what shares you have in total you can look at each one individually and try to establish any CGT implication and how you feel you can best manage it.

This may work for you not sure, but worth looking into. 

in_my_wellies

singhini said:

@greengagegarden
You sound like a friend of mine who recently inherited some shares and had no real idea of what shares and how many (about 4 years ago this was). 
Now this might work for you or might not but this is what my friend did in establishing what he had inherited. 

He looked at one of the share certificates in his name (National Grid) and it said something like "the company Equinity are the online share portal administrator company they deal with" 
So he rang Equinity and gave them the certificate number and they said "yes we can see you have shares with that company". He mentioned one or two other companies he had shares in and they said "yes we can see them too, and we can see you have shares with company A and company B aswell).

I think what he did was set up an account with Equinity and registered the share certificate for National Grid and then National Grid sent him an activation code. 
Once the account with Equinity was activated, he was able to import all the shares he had with all the companies (5 in total i think) and they all appeared within the one online account (you also have to register your bank account details against each company shares so the dividends can be paid directly into your bank account as they don't bother sending out paper cheques anymore).  

Once you have an understanding of what shares you have in total you can look at each one individually and try to establish any CGT implication and how you feel you can best manage it.

This may work for you not sure, but worth looking into. 

I agree with this. If you have the share certificates then Equinity are very helpful and understanding on the phone. I had some of my mother's to sell and to to transfer into my name. I'm sure they will help with your questions

I posted the forms and certificates Monday pm and received the new certificates on Thursday. The money from the sold shares was in my account on the following Monday (5 days, as promised)