Sometimes the costs of administering a deceased’s assets exceed the value of the underlying shares, so making the Executors / Administrators wanting to simply abandon the shares.

In such case a charity called Sharegift will accept small parcels of shares and accumulate them to sell later and then pay the proceeds to charity.

This is unfortunately usually the case with Hong Kong shareholdings as Hong Kong has “board lots” which means that you can only sell or buy a minimum number of shares at any one time, and cannot just buy any number of shares; and in addition the costs of resealing a Grant in Hong Kong are usually around £3,000 to start with. This is distressing for many clients, especially as share prices have been falling in Hong Kong in recent years making any decision to hold the shares for long term investment a disastrous decision.

We there advise that you seriously consider giving any small shareholdings to Sharegift, and we will be pleased to organise the process for you.