Microsoft - Activision Blizzard merger not recorded correctly

M Campbell Crockett

I owned 137 share of Activsion Blizzard. Raymond James reported the merger with Microsoft in two transactions. A Transfer Out transaction of 137 shares of Activision Blizzard and a Merger transaction of $13,015 received for the shares removed.

Quicken for Mac only entered the Transfer Out transaction as a Remove Shares transaction of 137 shares @92.42/share ($12,935.54). This would have been its market value on 13 October but not the cost basis of the shares removed which was $10,602.27. Why is the market value being used instead of the cost basis?

The transaction that wasn't recorded was the Merger transaction that recorded that I had received $13,015.00 for the shares or $95.00/share. The result is that Quicken's account balance for this account is $13,015.00 less than it should be.

How should I correctly enter this data? Changing the Remove Shares to a Sell @95.00/share would result in the account balance being correct but in a Capital Gain that did not occur.

Jon

I think you do have a capital gain, though. If MS bought your shares for $13K and your cost basis was only $10.6K, you have a $2.4K capital gain. Seems to me recording this as a sale at $95 per share is the right thing to do. This was a cash acquisition, right? you didn't receive any shares of Microsoft? I don't own any shares of either but that's how it's being reported in the media.

M Campbell Crockett

@Jon Assuming that there is a capital gain, Raymond James should have reported the transaction as a Sell of 137 shares for $13,015 instead of a Remove Shares transaction plus a Merger transaction. My first reaction was to change the Remove Shares to a Sell of 137 shares for $13,015 but thought I would post my comment before doing anything.

However, Quicken appears to have a problem with Remove Shares as it recorded the current market price for the shares removed instead of the current Cost Basis.

Jon

I don't really put too much faith in what things get "reported" as, especially in situations like this that only happen once in a while. If I don't agree with a downloaded transaction I delete it and replace it with what I think is correct. Quicken is there to help me, it's not my boss. If I get it wrong, I'll find out when I reconcile to the statement at the end of the month.

jacobs

Also, what Raymond James shows when you look at your account on its website is not necessarily the transactions they are sending to Quicken. I like @Jon's answer: it's a one-time event, so delete the erroneous transaction(s) and manually enter the correct one(s) yourself.

M Campbell Crockett

@jacobs Quicken's OFXLog.txt file does indeed containing both of the Activision Blizzard transactions that were displayed on the Raymond James web site.

In the register all that needed to be done was to change the transaction type from Remove Shares to Sell and update the Total Sale with the amount received from the merger.