Did anyone hold Pace (PIC) shares after the Arris acquisition?

30th Jan '16 by ivolpe

6 comments 4787 reads

Hi folks,

I use a stock ranks based strategy for stock selection and don't usually look too deeply into the news of stocks I buy.

One such stock I bought towards the end of last year was Pace (PIC) as they ticked the boxes. Unbeknown to me Pace was due to be acquired by Arris on 5 January (a US company traded on the NASDAQ). As per the terms of the acquisition 0.1455 Arris shares would be issued for each Pace share held.

When 5 January arrived and the Pace shares disappeared from my account I did some googling and found out about the acquisition.

I contacted my broker (Barclays) and asked when the Arris shares would be available for me to trade, as I wanted to get rid of them quickly. The broker seemed very confused about what to do and couldn't give me an answer.

Now, it's three weeks later, and the broker still hasn't let me trade the Arris shares and still seems pretty clueless as to when this should resolved. They have told me that their custodian still hasn't received the "physical shares". During this time, the Arris share price has dropped around 15% :(

I'm pretty much a newb in these kinds of matters. Can anyone with more experience than me tell me if this situation is normal after an acquisition? Is there usually a long delay after the acquisition date before the shares are actually available for trading, or should they be available to trade on the acquisition date?

I'm not really sure if I am just being fobbed off with excuses from my broker or whether this is something you just have to live with when a company is acquired and new shares are issued.

Did anyone of you decide to hold on to your Pace shares through acquisition, and have you experienced similar issues?

TIA!

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WarrantStar

30th Jan '16

Hi
I sold my Pace shares in the market before the take over went through.
I think that the problem is that the acquiring company is foreign, so their shares could not be held in a standard UK stock brokers account. I would get in touch with your broker again. Tell them that you are disappointed about the way things are going & ask for their help to resolve the situation ASAP. Ask them for a date for when your shares can be sold.

ivolpe

Hi Warranstar,

The Pace shares were in a SIPP which are unable to hold NASDAQ stocks, however Barclays told me they could put them in a bolt-on international trader account, so I don't think that's the issue.

According to Barclays they (or their custodian) doesn't have the shares, but this seems a big strange almost a month after the acquisition.

I've talked to them numerous times, but never really seem to get anywhere. Very frustrating experience so far!

vaticinator

2nd Feb '16

I have received the following reply from iDealing to my enquiry about my Arris shares:

"The ARRIS International Plc shares that are due to you following a corporate action on Pace are currently held with Computershare Trust Company N.A (CTCNA).
Unfortunately, we cannot add the ARRIS shares to your account until we are in receipt of them in our CREST account.
We are currently in the process of trying to transfer your ARRIS Shares from CTCNA to our CREST account, which will take some time to complete.
Unfortunately we do not have an exact date for when the shares will be added to your account but I can assure you that we will credit your account with the ARRIS shares as soon as we possibly can.
Kind regards,"

Not very satisfactory.

19th Feb '16

Finally I got to sell my shares for a 25% loss (would have a 7% gain if sold me on January 5th).

Barclays excuse was they didn't have the shares but after a lot of digging it turns out that they could have sent a form out before the end of the year which would have ensured the shares would be tradeable just after the acquisition, and avoided the delay (any broker could have done this).

Barclays tried to deny this but when confronted with the evidence ducked out of it by saying that they don't read RNS circulars (really?).

Anyway, massive cop-out from Barclays and I'm hugely disappointed with them. I'd recommend anyone thinking of using Barclays from thinking again. As a finishing touch they had the gall to offer me a "good will gesture" of £100 and a hamper. I'd much rather have the ~ £2000 I have lost due to their incompetence!

Lucas

20th Feb '16

i had them with IG spreadbetting and they handled it all nice and well - even got a phone call from them on the day when they switched pace into arris explaining how they accounted for it.

22nd Feb '16

I am still waiting for my Arris shares to appear in my iDealing account. I could accept this when other brokers were having the same problems but now I am getting cross! I hope iDealing are reading this.

Did anyone hold Pace (PIC) shares after the Arris acquisition?

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Ivolpe

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