Advice needed please - share dealing error

abouttimetoo

I’m hoping for a bit of advice so I’ll try to keep this brief

I hold a number of shares in a particular company and in 2003 purchased some more (3000). I received the share certificates and sold them in Dec 2006. I thought no more about this until I was doing some ‘balancing the books’ today. On first sight my on-line portfolio was considerably short of the number I actually hold. After many frustrating phone calls it was established that when I bought the shares in 2003 they opened up a separate account number for me (their administrative error), however, when I sold them, even though the other second account number was on all transactions they have debited my main account, hence it showing a lesser balance of shares than I expected.

So the current situation is that I have in my possession valid share certificates which the company can see are valid etc as the serial numbers are all valid and in issue and have not been sold. They have also confirmed that I still own the 3000 shares that I actually sold in 2006 (the ones that I asked to be sold and gave them the correct share certificates for - I have photo-copies of everything).

The other ‘twist’ is that on all my shares I opt to take the dividends in further shares, however, when I bought the 3000 I forgot to opt for this so was getting the dividend in cash. Due to their mistake in reducing the balance on my main account and presumably ‘selling’ (I say presumably as as stated above they say they can see the certificates I have in my possession have not been sold?) I have now missed out on whatever dividends the 3000 would have brought although I do now realise that I have received cash dividends on the 3000 so I’m not totally out of pocket.

Apologies, I hope this is not too confusing. My questions are, will they be allowed to just say the certificates I have are now invalid as they were sold in error rather than the correct 3000 shares and where might I stand with the lost share dividends even though I have received the cash.

Hope that all makes sense, any advice welcome!
Many thanks

nrsql

Didn't you wonder why you were getting dividends paid in cash for the last year?
Did you get a confirmation of the deal stating what had been done?

It'll be too late to reverse the deal.
Is there a difference between the shares you now own and the ones you expected to? If not the only problem is the dividends and you may get some compansation for that.
If the shares are different the company may be able to do a couple of deals to put you back in the correct position - depends if they are still available.

abouttimetoo

Hi Nrsql

Thanks for the reply. No, silly as it now sounds I didn't think anything about the cash dividends last year - I accept that's my fault - no excuse other than not taking enough notice and not particularly thinking about the shares I had sold as I have others.

Yes, I got a confirmation of the deal that had been done but it was a simple acknowldegement of sale and as I didnt know they had opened up a second account for me in error in 2003 nothing looked untowards.

On the plus side there is no difference in the number of shares I hold, however, I put a lot of the ones that I think they sold in error into an ISA nearly 12 months ago and everything went through fine which now seems very odd. I was just about to put some more in the ISA but now there is a question mark over whether they have sold these one as well. In addition as I returned the sharecertificates for 3000 when I sold them I obviously don't have them and they are saying I will have to pay to have them re-issed - needless to say I have no intention of doing that!

I'm going to pursue this further and also see what can be done about the dividends.