CBS and Viacom merger

Chiquito

Under the terms of the merger agreement, each Viacom Class A voting share and Viacom Class B non-voting share will convert into 0.59625 of a Class A voting share and Class B non-voting share of CBS, respectively.
My question is how to enter this in the ledger so that the my cost of Viacom is reflected in the new shares but is not considered a capital gain

Tom Young

If you have your facts correct here, that it's a non-taxable stock for stock merger, then the "Corporate Acquisition (stock for stock)" should give you the desired results.  Since you have two different stocks here you'll have to run the "wizard" twice.

markus1957

The new entity is traded as ViacomCBS. If you own CBS shares it's pretty much a name change (1 for 1) although the ticker changes also. If you own Viacom, then it should be handled as indicated by @Tom Young .  The official press release link follows-

https://ir.viacbs.com/static-files/7d26e7e6-7ab9-40ec-8e7e-3b8a83cf6964

q_lurker

You'll also want to do those 'wizard' transaction entries (Corporate Acquisition) before you accept downloaded transactions from the brokerage.  The downloaded transactions are not likely to have your cost basis information included.

Ringo22

CBS shares stay whole while shares of VIACOM convert to .59625 : 1 Name for both become VIACOMCBS Inc. New. Merger occurred 12/5/19. Down load from USAA was usless.

Would like to keep original lots.

Chiquito

After some review of the options available I decided to:
Sell all Viacom shares at the cost per share I carry for a total of X dollars. With the proceeds of this sale I bought the number of shares of ViacomCBS that I received.

For example: I owned 100 sh of VIA.B at a cost of $7.00 per share. I sold these for $700.00. I then bought 59.625 shares of ViacomCBS with the $700.00 and accepted the calculated per share price in the entry ($11.74 per share). Thus I now have ViacomCBS cost reflected in Quicken.

There is another entry to round up the total shares to 59 and this is done by selling .625 shares and noting this as cash-in-lieu that in my case is a long term capital gain.

 The shares of CBS become ViacomCBS by a simple corporate name change and this does not affect the cost.

 PLEASE, if you do these entries, BACK UP Quicken to a separate folder before you do anything. You can always go back to the backed up files for another run if you don't like or agree with the outcome.

q_lurker

@Chiquito. Be aware that your chosen approach sets up the new shares as acquired on that date of purchase. If you sell within the year, Quicken will treat that sale as a short term holding. Most likely that would be incorrect. 

Gail9@

Need help on how to enter in Quicken if you own both CBS and VIAB. Thanks for suggestions.

Gail9@

Figured it out: "Name Change" of CBS to ViacomCBS. Then "Corporate Acquisition" : Company Acquired: Viacom; New shares: 0.59625; then Price per share for acquiring company: $43.71 (from Viacom Form 8937 Dec 16, 2019) (or use your brokerage figure); Memo: CBS and Viacom merger: "VIAC" ViacomCBS. My brokerage sold the fractional shares a day later entered as a sale showing it as a sale of the Viacom shares which you can't do after the fact, so I sold the ViacomCBS fractional shares. The end total is only few cents difference. I did a test run in a "test file" to make sure it worked.