Don't specialise - but here goes.
Any half decent broker will sell (or buy) overseas stock for you. (One advantage of holding foreign shares is that most don't have the UK equivilent of stamp duty added on when buying). But you might need to set up a trading account with a broker. That's no big deal - just like opening an account with the bookies really. T D Waterhouse for example trade in stocks from 17 overseas exchanges which covers just about everything.
Two cautionary points: first it will cost a bit more than selling UK shares, I'm guessing here, but maybe about £35 per trade. So if they aren't worth much they may not be worth selling; second if you are unfortunate enough to hold what are commonly referred to as Over The Counter (OTC) or US Regulation S shares sold by a boiler room you might just as well chuck the share certificate in the bin.
Stanmore/saga - it depends on what exchange the share is traded.
TD Waterhouse and some other broking firms do sell shares on non-UK markets, what you would need to do is find a broker that trades on that market, open an account, transfer the shares to it and then trade away. From memory TDW charge the same to buy/sell shares internationally as they do in UK domestic markets, but don't take my word for it.
I had this issue a few years ago & Barclays Stockbrokers were ok to sell them, they were US shares.
Saga - before you proceed to go ahead with the trade and agree terms with the broker you will need to speak to the registrar regarding if they're valid to sell in their current form.
Apologies if you already have, you do need to though. You could get stung if you end up having to buy the shares back and the price has moved. This could happen if the sale can't be settled due to the fact the certificate is no longer deemed as being Valid!
Thanks PH - I had the shares transferred to my name when I inherited them (which was not that long ago), so the certificate should be valid. Good point though for anyone else holding foreign shares.
I had lots of correspondence and phone-calls with the registrars - sent them a load of certificates and they sorted out the certificates that were still valid.
Comments
Any half decent broker will sell (or buy) overseas stock for you. (One advantage of holding foreign shares is that most don't have the UK equivilent of stamp duty added on when buying). But you might need to set up a trading account with a broker. That's no big deal - just like opening an account with the bookies really. T D Waterhouse for example trade in stocks from 17 overseas exchanges which covers just about everything.
Two cautionary points: first it will cost a bit more than selling UK shares, I'm guessing here, but maybe about £35 per trade. So if they aren't worth much they may not be worth selling; second if you are unfortunate enough to hold what are commonly referred to as Over The Counter (OTC) or US Regulation S shares sold by a boiler room you might just as well chuck the share certificate in the bin.
Stanmore/saga - it depends on what exchange the share is traded.
TD Waterhouse and some other broking firms do sell shares on non-UK markets, what you would need to do is find a broker that trades on that market, open an account, transfer the shares to it and then trade away. From memory TDW charge the same to buy/sell shares internationally as they do in UK domestic markets, but don't take my word for it.
Thanks BFR...
Apologies if you already have, you do need to though. You could get stung if you end up having to buy the shares back and the price has moved. This could happen if the sale can't be settled due to the fact the certificate is no longer deemed as being Valid!