bobbie123

I want to sell some UK shares that are in certificated form. I've no broker or bank any longer in UK. Anyone any experience in selling UK shares from Oz ?
My online broker here isn't interested.

swans

Certificated as in you have a cert rather than broker or company sponsored as here.

Try commsec,they have o/seas dealings but cert rather than sponsor will make it difficult.Does the uk not operate on CREST? rather than CHESS here.Try the UK company they may have a dealing desk.

Cerificated dealing went out around 20 yrs ago here.T+3 here makes it very difficult and time consuming

Geordie downunder

JAJ

Most U.K. retail brokers will not deal with someone with a non-U.K. address.

However, I expect that most Australian brokers could accept a transfer of foreign stock into a brokerage account, which would then allow it to be traded.

If existing Australian broker can't or won't do this, perhaps time to find a new one.

A different option is to sell the stock privately to another person in the U.K. although this obviously has risks in terms of receiving payment, etc.

Jacqui

No experience personally, but I believe Paterson's can help you with this http://www.psl.com.au/private-client...ional-equities

Spencer M

I had this exact problem. I had a large number of shares (in a single company) in my Investdirect brokerage account with HSBC in the UK. When I moved to Australia, HSBC decided that as I was no longer resident in the UK, then I could not be an Investdirect customer – so they closed my account. This was despite the fact that I was still an existing bank customer of HSBC in the UK as well as having bank accounts with HSBC in Australia as well! Very annoying. Anyway, I ended up with a paper share certificate and no broker.

I recently bought a house here in Australia and so needed to liquidise the shares. I approached a number of brokers in the UK but all of them refused to open an account for me because I was non-UK resident. As I understand it, there is no reason why a UK broker cannot accept a non-resident client other than it is more difficult due to international money laundering procedures, but certainly not impossible. I looked on a number of ex-pat forums and it seems that getting a UK broker can be very hit and miss.
I also approached a number of brokers based here in Australia and whilst there was no problem opening an account, converting the paper share certificate was a big issue and I couldn’t find anyone to do it.
This was extremely stressful as I had committed to the house purchase but couldn’t access my funds.

After a late night phoning yet more brokers in the UK, I eventually contacted Beaufort Securities in London (you can look them up on the web). I spoke to their Business Development Manager, Matthew Giles who was absolutely brilliant and basically held my hand through the process of setting up an account, selling the shares and transferring the money over to Australia. I had to get some documents certified (easy enough to do) and send them across to the UK. The whole process took a couple of weeks start to end.
I would definitely recommend that if you are looking for a broker in the UK, then speak to these guys - they are the only brokerage I could find that not only helped my situation but also the only ones that even acted like they wanted to help. Fees for selling the shares were very reasonable and when it came to converting the sterling into Aus$, then Beauforts gave me a cracking deal on the exchange rate - certainly better than my bank or the online exchange bureaus (eg. moneycorp). The deal on the exchange rate actually saved me more money than the cost of the brokerage fees to sell the shares – so I’m thinking I definitely came out a winner.

I’m no expert, but I’d happily recommend Beaufort Securities and in particular Matthew.