On May 15, 10:57 am, Alasdair wrote:
> Yesterday, I got a letter from a company called Prosearch who told me
> that, as a former holder of O2 shares, I was entitled to some =A33000
> because my holding had been compulsorily purchased by Telefonica SA
> but over =A3400 would be deducted from my payout as an administrative
> fee by Prosearch.
>
This sounds like a typical Nigerian style scam, but on a smaller
scale. Assuming you kept your contact address up to date with the
share registrar you would have been sent an offer for the purchase of
the shares and if you did not accept and total acceptances were over
90% (or what ever the magic figure is) you would have been given
notice of compulsory acquisition by Telefonica and then sent a cheque
for the full value. Usually the target company's share registrar
arranges to do this. Prosearch is a head hunting firm, not a share
registrar as far as I can see. I may be wrong in detail, but this is
AFAIK what would normally happen. Someone may be able to correct me
if am wrong.
Similar process if you have a tiny number of shares and it is costing
alot (in proportion to the value of shares) to send out annual
reports, notices of meetings, dividends (who can be bothered banking a
cheque for say 20p), etc.
There is a guy in Australia who regularly mails out low-ball offers to
buy shares in the hope little old ladies will think that it is
official and fall for it. The share registrar of the 'target' company
is obliged to provide a copy of the register for a reasonable fee and
had been providing electronic media in spredsheet or similar format.
They tried to lick the spiv by providing the information in 'graphic'
format but AFAIK he seems to scan the graphic format to extract the
data for printing his offer forms. |