Company Buyout

Dude, where are my shares?

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A nondescript letter arrived the other day referencing a company I bought last year. I glanced at it, and as is my wont, threw it away as I assumed it was telling me about a dividend. Fortuntely my subconscious noticed something and I fished it out of the bin.

Ah, yes, 390 yen seems a bit high for a dividend. Reading the letter again revealed that the company had been bought and I should tell them where to send the money. Hmmm.

I logged into my account at Rakuten and found that the shares had disappeared. Apparently they have been delisted. Eeek.

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Letter explaining what happened to my shares

I guess I should have been paying more attention 🙂

I bought the shares at 211 yen, so this is a fairly satisfactory result. Even so, it was a bit of a surprise. Is this kind of thing common in Japan? I presume I have to do the taxes by hand now as the shares are no longer in my tax-reporting tokutei kouza.

How about you? Have you ever had a company bought out from under you?

3 Responses

  1. I held some altria/phillip morris back when the latter got spun off, 2007-2008 or so. I was a little irritated at the way it settled out, the PM shares I got, and the MO shares I was left with.
    I sold the PM, and I’d have to look but I either sold the resulting MO shares, and then bought back in, or held what I had and bought more (fall, 2008).
    It’s been a dividend gold mine since then, but that’s a separate story.
    Similar this week, Sprint has been on a roller coaster with the T-Mobile deal, will it go thru or not?
    211 > 390, maybe you’re thinking coulda woulda shoulda? 😉

    1. Can’t complain really 🙂
      Bought them in October 2016, got a 10 yen per share dividend last year, and now will make a decent profit. Wish everything I did turned out like this!

  2. This happens and for the most part is a good thing. About 8 years ago I bought a company on the FTSE, Coastal Energy. They were heavily favored by The Naked Trader aka Robby Burns. I bought and sold repeatedly for 2/3 years until a Canadian company offered a decent price. The money went straight into my Mum’s ISA. The only negative was the pound weakened about 40% during the time of de-listing and payment in GB pounds.
    As for taxes payable in Japan, I would keep all the paperwork and expect to pay 20% next spring.