For those of you who are familiar with Jim Sinclair, he advocates making sure your shares are in your name, and so not able to be used by your brokerage as collateral for their own purposes. He advocates taking possession.
Here is a sad story of Kirk Stephenson, who suffered from this madness in the markets and lost sight of the light. His story does have a practica lesson however.
I was relieved to see evidence that if you were able to vote your shares then it is more probable that they are safe*.
Here is an excerpt:
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On a mild Thursday morning in late September, Kirk Stephenson, a London investment-fund executive, ate breakfast with his wife and eight-year-old son, then drove to a train station about 30 miles from his Chelsea home.
As an express train approached, Mr. Stephenson stepped onto the tracks, according to British Transport Police. The driver applied emergency brakes but couldn't stop in time. Mr. Stephenson, 47 years old, died at the scene.
What was ailing this man who seemed to have it all?
... Mr. Stephenson was a casualty of the global financial crisis, his pressures culminating with the failure of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc.
Mr. Stephenson was chief operating officer of Olivant Ltd., an investment firm he co-founded in 2006 with Luqman Arnold, a former UBS AG president. When UBS posted huge losses in mortgage securities earlier this year, Olivant began accumulating a 2.8% stake and leading a revolt to turn around the Swiss banking giant.
The UBS shares, now valued at about $1 billion, were put in a Lehman account with a fairly common proviso that allowed Lehman to use the assets as collateral to borrow money. Because of this so-called rehypothecation agreement, Olivant couldn't locate the UBS stock when Lehman filed for bankruptcy in September *or vote the shares at a UBS shareholder meeting in October. Olivant may never recover the assets
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BK
