RetireJapan

Last year I tried to change my address with the company which administers Santander shares and they promptly told me that as I now live in Japan I could not continue to hold them. To sell them I would have had to use a Japanese broker apparently, and as they were only worth a few hundred quid I couldn’t face the fees and hassle. However, the fees and hassle of using a Japanese broker may be the way you have to go based on my experience (usual disclaimers, this is only personal experience from one source). I ended up donating my shares to my sister, which was the other option they offered.

Curious. A dividend statement from Santander arrived here (on the Kanto Plain) this morning - my wife has a similarly small holding. I think these people make it up as they go along: nothing makes any fundamental sort of sense, everyone is terrified they will have failed to enforce some ill-defined requirement or other. AAMOF, although they can be very uncooperative, I don't really see that they can order you to stop owning something. If it is in a nominee account they can close the account and return you the value, but if you hold a share certificate... well, you just say "Yes" and do nothing. I have actually been trying to sell some of our shares with one degree of earnestness or another for at least the last ten years. (I wonder though, does this mean that a Japanese stockbroker would accept my certificate and sell the shares for me? At what sort of rate?)

Meanwhile, I have a old and reliable friend in the UK who has agreed to help. One plan is simply to sell some shares to him privately, which I believe I can do by simply filing a share transfer form with the registrars and paying any stamp duty owed. (Anyone with experience of this?) Then he can easily sell them through a stockbroker. Makes no sense, but we can't let sense interfere with the endless struggle of the antiproletariat against the ravages of reason.