Resource Spotlight: Directory of Obsolete Securities

Directory of Obsolete Securities (332.67)  This source can be used by investors who are trying to identify old stock certificates (often inherited), with details such as former company names, mergers and final action making it obsolete (example - "each share Common $1 par exchanged for $4.20 cash). 

I blogged about some of the print resources for investing information (including the above) in the past, but I thought it might be helpful to have a concrete example of the source in use.

Today in Reference, a customer was searching for stock information in order to help a client who had recently inherited stock in a company.  Specifically, he needed to see if Atlantic National Bank had ever ordered a stock split between 1967 and 1985.  He needed to calculate his cost basis for the security, which through years of mergers and acquisitions was now Wells Fargo.  Fortunately he knew some of the dates and company name changes along the way.

My first thought was that the S&P Stock Guides might be the place to look, since our holdings roughly fit his timeline.  Also, because they were organized on a monthly basis, they might more easily show the stock split information instead of having to pouring through the daily stock tables in old Wall St. Journals on microfilm.  After he looked at the Guides, he determined that wasn't what he was looking for.  That's when the Directory of Obsolete Securities came to mind.

The Directory lists the manner in which the company's stock became obsolete, along with the new name (if applicable) and date of the action.  As I said before, the customer knew the basic timeline for the various mergers, and this helped greatly.  He knew that Atlantic National Bank had been bought by First Union in the mid-Eighties, which later became Wachovia, which is now Wells Fargo.  Our holdings of the Directory are not complete, with a gap from 1978 to 2002.  Using the 2002 edition, we were able to locate a listing for Atlantic National Bank (Jacksonville).

As you can see from the listing, there may be multiple companies with the same or similar names, so be sure to check the location.  From this entry, we learned that ANB was acquired by Atlantic Bancorporation in 1968, and "public interest eliminated."  This means that they were no longer a publicly-traded company, but a private business, which is why the customer couldn't locate them in the S&P Stock Guides.  We then looked across the page to the listing for Atlantic Bancorporation.

Eureka!  The information that he needed:  a 2 for 1 stock split on September 6, 1983.  This also confirms his rough timeline, with the name changes to First Union and later, Wachovia.

Update:  It turns out that the customer came back later and needed more detailed stock price information for certain days in the late 1960s, in which case he searched the stock tables in the Wall St. Journal microfilm.  The point is that searching for old stock information can be a bit like detective work, but with the right tools it might not be that painful.  Feel free to thumb through a few pages of the Directory the next time you're roaming in Reference, just to get a feel for the information that's included and how it's organized.