Recover long lost shares held by brokerage that got acquired

Question

I am a UK citizen and had a brokerage account with suretrade.com in 2001, with a number of positions in NASDAQ traded companies which today would be worth a few thousand USD for the companies still trading.

I changed address around then, did not update with the brokerage and for various reasons never successfully got around to recovering my investments. In the meantime, suretrade was acquired in 2001 by Fleet Boston's Quick & Reilly, which in turn merged with Bank of America in 2004.

Is there any way I can recover these investments or has too much time passed? If I can recover them, what are the options to achieve this?

The only paperwork I have is a page from a statement dated 31/3/2001; no contract, etc.

RobertSoos · Answer

Your trading account login and password might have been deleted, but the contract you signed as a customer is binding for the succeeding firms.

For example, a very well known broker TD-Direct was acquired recently and renamed to Internaxx. This did not affect client accounts, and even opened positions.

So I would suggest you to find your contract and demand to sort this thing out. If you are unlucky, the contract might have contained that positions get closed out automatically after a certain period of time.

If things don't go well, turn to the financial regulator; in the USA it should be the SEC.

Recover long lost shares held by brokerage that got acquired

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