AboutPaul Henneman Expertise Stock forecasting and fair market valuations.
Experience
Past/Present clients CBSMarketwatch.com, Hoovers.com, Multexinvestor.com, Bank of NY, numerous hedge funds and institutions, other partners and clients can be viewed at http://www.valuengine.com/about/careers.html
Question I used to work for Atlantic Financial Federal about 20 yrs ago an received stock shares (hard paper copy). Since there has been a number of bank mergers since then - is it worth anything?
Answer John,
Thank you for your question! If the original company has merged, even if has been several times, and the new company trades, yes the stock is still worth something. Your ownership would have transferred down through the mergers. Each merger deal is different, and there is usually a share conversion, so you would almost certainly now own either more or fewer shares. The best thing to do is contact the investor relations department of the current company. Almost all publicly traded companies have an investor relations department.
If you do not know for sure if the company still exists, or what the current name of the company is after multiple mergers and acquisitions, I would recommend the below:
Try google searching the original company name, and see if you can locate any stories or news releases along these lines. You may be able to track the company over the years to see how the company has been merged and the resulting new company name. If you do find something, your certificates values may be tied to the new company.
If the above two do not work, it is likely that the certificates have no value, but not a certainty. The only way to be sure is to have a professional search done. There are several small companies who will research old certificates, but they do charge small fees. Here is a link to a website that lists some of the search services: http://www.sec.gov/answers/oldcer.htm
The above site is created and hosted by the SEC, so should be completely reliable.
The overall goal in all of this is to see if the company still trades, and if it does for you to contact the investor relations department of that company. Almost all public companies have a person or department that handles investor relations, and they will have the information relating to exactly how much your certificates are worth, and what to do with them. You cannot simply take the number of shares and multiply by the current stock price if it currently trades. Much time has passed since the certificates you mention were created, so the stock may have split one or more times since then, affecting the overall value in different ways.
I hope that this helps gets you started! In the vast majority of cases, old certificates turn out to not be worth anything. But there certainly are exceptions to that rule. Please do not hesitate to follow up with me if I can be of any additional service,
Sincerely,
Paul Henneman
President
ValuEngine Inc
www.ValuEngine.com
