How do you record a corporate name change? (Q Mac)

M Campbell Crockett

Quicken(Mac) doesn't corporate acquisitions, corporate divestitures, and corporate name changes.

Seagate Technology changed its name Seagate Technology Holdings.  My brokerage's OFX file recorded the corporate name change by removing the Seagate Technology shares and adding the Seagate Technology Holdings shares.  The original Seagate Technology lots are merged into a single lot of Seagate Technology Holdings shares with a short-term holding period although all of the original shares are long-time holdings.

Is there a technique to recover the lot information and recover the long-time holding status of the lots?

Quicken_Tyka

Hello @M Campbell Crockett

Thank you for taking the time to visit the Community to post your question although, I apologize that you have not received a response.

There is an ongoing Idea here that you may add your vote. There is also discussion on the thread of how other users manage this transaction.

I hope this helps!

-Quicken Tyka

jacobs

M Campbell Crockett said:

Is there a technique to recover the lot information and recover the long-time holding status of the lots?

You still have the original Seagate Technology account in Quicken with all the transaction history, up to and including the Remove Shares transaction(s) which brought the holdings to zero, correct?

It seems to me there are two possible courses of action. (Make a copy of your file before trying anything!)

If this corporate name change was nothing more than that, there was no taxable event, and perhaps you can use the old account going forward. The ticker symbol remained unchanged, right? What if you:

• delete the new account
• delete the Remove Shares transaction(s) from the old account
• disable the old account from downloading
• edit the name
• re-enable the account for downloading

(I'm not even sure if the disable/re-enable part is necessary.)

The more involved approach -- perhaps much more, depending on your volume of transitions for this security -- is to remove the single Add Shares transaction in the new account, and add multiple Add Share transactions to re-create the original acquisitions one transaction at a time in the new account. The Add Shares transactions allow you to specify the date added to this account independently from date acquired. (A fellow user created a PDF of how to do this with an intermediate account, which may or may not be necessary in this case.)

M Campbell Crockett

@Quicken_Tyka Interestingly, the link that you provided is to a conversation that I started several years ago when my display name was M C Crockett.  I wasn't allowed to keep that name when I had to change my email address after my wife died and I sold my home.

M Campbell Crockett

@jacobs A part of the problem is that the OFX Specification does not provide the financial institution to report a corporate name change.  The only means of reporting a corporate name change is by reporting two <TRANSFER>...</TRANSFER> with a <TFERACTION>OUT or <TFERACTION>IN element to specify whether the stock <UNITS> are being removed or added.

The older Quicken(Win) approach was to create an entry for the name change.  The more recent Quicken(Win) approach is to insert an Add Shares entry specifying the new name for each lot held under the old name immediately following the Remove Shares entry for the old name.

Fortunately, the Quicken(Mac) Portfolio view will show all the lots, their acquisition dates, and acquisition costs if you set the Price and Holdings as of date to the day before the name change.  You can then replace the Add Shares transaction created by Quicken with an Add Shares entry for each lot under the new corporate name.

The biggest problem is with the number of years of transactions that are involved.

jacobs

Yes, but my question was whether you could discard the new account and stick with the old account, minus, the Remove Shares transaction? That seems easier to do than creating lots of Add Share transactions in the new account. 

M Campbell Crockett

@jacobs I'm getting confused by your references to old and new accounts.  A somewhat simpler method of the approach that you described would be the following:

1. Restore your database using the backup from the day before the name change.
2. Open the Securities window and replace the old security's name with the new name.
3. Use the Update All Accounts to download all transactions.
4. Delete the Remove Shares transaction and verify that the Placeholder transaction that it generated was removed.
5. Delete the Add Shares transaction.

Your database is updated and current at this point.  Obviously, I would need to re-enter any manual entries that I made in cash and saving accounts on the day of the name change.

The PDF that you referenced earlier is doing, essentially, the same as the above does for a simple name change.  The key in both cases is that both approaches need to occur before the <TRANSFER>...</TRANSFER> transactions are downloaded from the financial institution.

jacobs

My apologies for the confusion. I was thinking from your original description that the Seagate Technology shares which were removed were in one account (the "old" account in my posts) and the Seagate Technology Holdings shares were added as a different account (the "new" account). So yes, what you describe just above is essentially what I was thinking -- get rid of the downloaded transactions to Remove Share sand Add Shares, and end up with your original security transactions intact, just using the slightly changed name.