BellSouth to AT&T Stock

Except for mutual funds you cannot have fractional shares.

1. You must go back thru ALL of your Bellsouth (BS) transactions and eliminate fractions. If they were caused by splits or dividends reinvested you received a book entry for the shares including fractions and then the fractions were immediately sold for a gain or loss which was long or short depending on the original purchase date.

1. Now take the whole shares and, in Quicken, sell all of them on the date of ATT purchase.

2. Use ALL of the funds received to purchase the 1.325 X (BS shares) of ATT.

1. If you now have fractions of ATT enter a sell transaction for the $$ you received for them. For IRS the gain or loss goes back to the original date of BS purchase but Quicken will think they were acquired on the day of transfer. Same goes for when you finally sell the remaining ATT shares.

Eric

Thanks very much, Eric. This looks a lot more involved than I thought it would be, so will have to sleep overnight on this and maybe it will be clearer tomorrow morning. Again, thanks!

Katie

Eric:

Companies issue and maintain records on fractional shares of stock.

Quicken works quite well with fractional shares of stock.

Except for those bits of misinformation, the procedure you describe is workable.

Katie:

If you follow the procedures described by Eric (but using fractional shares of course), you will have the correct number of ATT shares at the correct price. Check your figures with those which ATT will provide when you receive their paperwork.

But, there are two things to be aware of.

2) Quicken will have an incorrect acquisition date for the asset. The acquisition date for the ATT shares should be the acquisition date of the original SBC shares, not the date the SBC shares were exchanged for ATT shares.

Depend> Except for mutual funds you cannot have fractional shares.

I am using Quicken 2006 Deluxe.

Katie

Further.

I f> Eric:

Just want to point out that SBC and Bellsouth are not the same company.

wbertram: I think you are misreading what Eric meant. He didn't say QUICKEN couldn't handle fractional shares, he was talking about the PROCESS of the transferral. Read his #1 again....he indeed states "1. You must go back thru ALL of your Bellsouth (BS) transactions and eliminate fractions. If they were caused by splits or dividends reinvested you received a book entry for the shares including fractions and then the fractions were immediately sold for a gain or loss which was long or short depending on the original purchase date.". That is nothing to do with Quicken; it DOES have to do with the process (Regardless of Quicken) that is used in doing the conversion. Clearly he states that fractional shares are indeed possible to be owned via splits or reinvested dividends.

Now, I might be misreading what Eric is saying....

There is no need to eliminate BLS fractional shares from all previous transactions if they have been held in book form in the BLS Dividend Reinvestment Program (DRIP). This applies to both reinvested dividends and stock splits.

I'm sitting right here looking at my BLS quarterly statements for 4Q1998 and

Only fractional shares that exist at the time of the acquisition have to be sold. What I don't know is whether or not fractional BLS shares will be sold or whether they'll be converted to fractional AT&T shares before any resulting fractional AT&T shares are sold. This info is probably in the prospectus.

If that's what's already been said, my apologies for the repetition.

Jerry

I just made the same conversion and it worked out perfectly. It retained my original cost basis from BLS and created the exact amount of ATT shares. I am currently using Quicken 2004 Basic.

Here's what I did:

1. Open the investment account containing the BLS shares.

1. Click on the button " Enter Transactions"

2. In the next window, choose "Corporate acquisition (stock for stock)" from the "enter transaction" box.

1. Enter the details of the takeover. In this case its 1.325 shares of ATT for every share of BLS. ATT share price on conversion date (put in the correct date) was .50/share.

2. Quicken will then create all the selling and buying transactions including fractional shares.

I wish it worked as well with stock spin-offs and corporate splits like the recent Viacom-CBS split.

I am using Quicken Deluxe 2006 and I do not have Corporate Acquisition listed under "Enter Transaction". Do I need another version? Katie

Hi, Katie.

You must have missed the thread here earlier this month. On 1/2/07, Jason Molinari asked about this transaction his post with the Subject: Re: Corp. acquisition recording transactions question.

I posted a long reply. The key paragraph from my response included this key paragraph:

Yes, although unusual, it is certainly possible to have fractional shares of many stocks, especially if you acquired them in a DRIP or employee purchase plan. Usually, in an acquisition or spin-off, fractional shares are sold as a part of the transaction and the shareholder receives a check for the value of the fractional share. This "sale" is recorded as a sale of the fractional share immediately after the acquisition or spin-off is recorded, including calculation of the new tax basis of that fractional share. The BellSouth acquisition did provide for purchase of fractional shares, but see the paragraph (on page

See the other long thread here, started by John Blaustein on 12/05/05, Subject: How to enter SBC acquiring AT&T? We discussed that unusual transaction pretty thoroughly, but it should not involve you, except for its historical interest.

To answer your specific questions:

Use the Corporate Acquisition (stock for stock) transaction. Note that it doesn't even ask how many shares (or fractions) of BellSouth you owned (it already knows that.) or what you paid for them. It asks for the number of new shares (1.325) per old share. And it asks for the "Price per share..." of AT&T - but that number is irrelevant, so it doesn't matter what you put here. As I said in the earlier thread, "Quicken should automatically adjust each lot of your BellSouth stock to reflect the new number of shares and the new basis per share, and add it to your AT&T holdings. Each lot should still show its original acquisition date. You then record the sale of the fractional share, and you're done for now." (And read Stephen Ciffone's post here earlier today.)

Yes, but...

The "fun" will come when you start to sell your new shares, because you will need to determine WHICH shares you are selling (unless you sell them all at once) and the basis and holding period of those particular shares. (Hint: Let Quicken select them for you. You choose "Specify Lots..." from the Sell transaction screen, then start with the oldest shares and keep going until Quicken has selected enough shares to match what you are selling. This lets Q resolve rounding problems so that it doesn't some day think you have

I'm happy to say that I haven't had to work out such a basis calculation for DRIP shares in nearly 20 years, and that was pre-Quicken. As I recall, it wasn't hard. But it was TEDIOUS! I hope Quicken makes it easier for you.

RC

Sylvia You must have Bell South set up as a "Single Mutual Fund" account. Go the Summary tab of that account and click on the "yes" beside Single Mutual fund and change it to a brokerage account. Then do as per the earlier advice. (Will take a while to get used to fact that share balance doesn't show up automatically but you will find that's not a problem over time)

Bob L.

Sylvia wrote:

Stephen, what transactions did it enter? Did it enter a return of capital for BLS and a purchase of ATT? If so, what are the dates of the transaction? Are they the original date you purchased BLS? Thanks,

-Jeff

Quicken 06 Deluxe should have the same type of transaction. Quicken 2007 has the same transaction "Corporate Acquisition (stock for stock)".

Note that if your account is a "Single Mutual Fund" account, then that transaction does not appear. Maybe that is the problem?

I've always considered the AT&T situation a mess. Thanks to your inspiration I will henceforth think of it as an "incestuous mess" -)

I was really puzzled by this field and, although I've never asked about it, I was hoping you'd volunteer an answer.

Thanks RC,

Jerry

No.

You need to hold your security in a non-Single Mutual Fund account.

Duh...Sorry about that.

Please substitute Bell South for SBC in all my posts.

Sorry

DP wrote: