Owen778

I'm hoping a few of the regulars have had to sell UK-based shares in the past, and can help.

I have a few thousand pounds of shares in a UK Share Incentive Plan (SIP) from my previous employer over ten years ago. These are held for me by Equiniti in the UK, who run the scheme. I would like to sell these shares to simplify my finances.

Equiniti are willing to hold my shares, but their share dealing service is only available to UK residents, so I decided to transfer the shares to Schwab, who are my US broker. Getting to the point where I think I understand how to do it has taken over a year, because every time I contact Equiniti, I get a different answer on how to do this, and each answer is different to what's on their website. This company is awful.

I think I need to find a US broker who can deal in international shares with reasonably low fees. Unfortunately, Schwab seem to be a bad choice, as the commission in their standard Schwab One account is over $100 per international trade. They have a separate Global trading option, but this is only open to US citizens.

So, has anyone been through this process before, and can recommend a broker to use?

I did find this thread, but I was hoping for a bit more detail. http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=808345

Thanks very much.

Voltore

I sold some CDN stock with TD Waterhouse, they say they will take UK major stock. I do have some UK ones to deal with, just haven't yet!

Scottrade say they will, eTrade as well, just not used.

Michael

Schwab charges £9 for online trades and £30 for broker assisted trades plus 0.1% of the principle for UK exchanges according to page 12 of the following document. There are also UK fees besides those amounts (see note 6). That seems fairly competitive with the other large discount brokerages.

http://www.schwabcdn.com/public/file...0-23_FINAL.pdf

I don't think you want to use TD Ameritrade since they are the only large discount brokerage that does not support online trading for foreign exchanges.

if you can get Equiniti to issue you the stock certificates, just bring them to a local Schwab branch and witless than a month, they will be in your account and you can online trade them.

Owen778

Thanks all, that's useful.

Voltore - I had E*Trade and Fidelity as possible options already. Scottrade might be an option too, but I want to be sure it will work before I open an account, and I haven't been able to find details for any of them on their websites. I'll keeping looking.

Michael - Sorry, that's the Schwab Global account that I mentioned as only available to people who are both US citizens and residents. Schwab will trade foreign shares into a standard account, but only by speaking to an advisor, and the commission seems to be $100-plus.

RICH

That's funny. I was hoping for a revelation here, and you found my old thread. I just got another 4gbp dividend check, I now have 17gbp in unclaimed dividends.