At last, an aid to tracking down the stocks that mysteriously disappear

David Potts

Sun Herald

20 October 2002

IF you have shares in companies that suddenly vanished from the stock exchange, you can at last find out what happened to them.

The free website www.delisted.com.au, set up by Tony McLean of the Australian Shareholders Association, will search for your shares.

Although it won't bring your money back, at least you'll be able to find out whether the company still exists, perhaps in another name, or has gone belly-up, in which case you can claim a tax loss against any capital gains.

If you don't have a handy capital gain, the losses can be carried forward until you do.

Companies disappear off the face of the stock exchange when they don't pay their ASX listing fee.

So their disappearance doesn't necessarily mean they are no longer with us. Sometimes they pop back again, having paid their bill.

More often, however, they are goners. And the sharemarket is too brutal to care about what happens to the shareholders.

Some collapses, such as HIH, One.Tel, Harris Scarfe and Pasminco, get plenty of publicity, but many smaller stocks can disappear without a trace.

And in Pasminco's case, the company is technically suspended, not delisted. Its announcements are still recorded by the ASX.

“Angry about losing their investment when a company suddenly becomes insolvent, shareholders are then justifiably frustrated by not being kept informed of the status of an administration, receivership or liquidation," the association's newsletter Equity said.

“Insolvency practitioners are beholden to creditors and tend to overlook residual shareholder interests."

If the company has gone bankrupt, accountants aren't obliged to inform shareholders if there's no money left.

A liquidator's declaration has to be made before the tax office will accept there is a capital loss, which is the amount you originally paid.

Unlike some capital gains, losses can't be indexed.

“The issue of the declaration can take years and shareholders are rarely provided with an assessment in advance, as to when it may be issued," Equity warned. ``This can have significant implications for the management of their shareholdings and the incidence of taxation.

“Typically, the liquidators' declaration is not circulated and shareholders are often not aware that the appropriate declaration has been made."

If the website has no information on a company, you can send it a request to look.

An estimated 200,000 shareholders have been affected by corporate collapses in the past 18 months.