RichardS2005

Hi Guys,

Looking for a little advice here. Standard Life is demutulising and I have been offered some shares and three options

1. Sell on issue (£10 admin charge)
2. Buy more (offer rate of £2.10 - £2.70 with a 5% discount)
3. Keep shares

I'm leaning towards 3. but I will probably sell soon anyway so was wondering if it might be better to just sell..... I only have 259 shares so its not going to make me a mint but I'd like to make the most of it!

Anyone else with Standard Life - care to share their plan or advice?

Cheers

Richard

AudiMan

Richard,
similar number allocated to me, (pretty cr*p considering my endowment with them has a £17k shortfall !!).
I'm gonna keep mine, as you say it's not exactly a lottery win but I think they will go up rather than down, so I plan to keep hold until I need that extra few hundred quid.

Ian

RichardS2005

Yeah that's what I'm thinking too. Probably gonna cash the endowment in too soon, I think putting the money in a saving account would be better.

Richard

RMA26

Are we talking about a sharesave scheme here? is one being offered?

OllyK

No standard Life is floating on the stock market like the Halifax, Abbey etc did. If you are a member with qualifiying products you get shares.

dubnut71

Going to keep mine (similar Number) but do you have any advice on what to do with my endowment?.
Mine is going to underperform and will fall short of my initial sum.

So do I keep paying my £50 a month? do I stop paying and change the balance over to repayment?, Sell it, cash it in? Surrender it?

Any advice gratefully recieved

fast bloke

Dubnut - you have PM

Hol

iTrader: (1)

Im selling mine.

I want a GT30 cored twin scroll

ronjeramy

iTrader: (1)

yep i go the same(259 shares) for my stakeholders pension think i'm gonna hang onto them, plus you get some extra ones if you keep them for a year, so hopefully they'll rise in value gradually

Moonloops

I'm taking another £2k's worth and waiting a year to grab bonus shares.


worth a punt, must of the "experts" in the papers are saying to hang on and grab extra..

Robert Rosario

Dont trust the press!

Standard Life not the company they were a few years ago in terms of market share. Products off the boil, distribution channels shaky, with profits problems, delays with launch of WRAP platform, etc, etc.

Potentially ripe for takeover/merger though, but proceed with caution.

The Snug Rhino

hardly, their wrap is likely to be market leader and very likely to be huge. Its already in use and due for general release pretty soon.....plenty of firms are going to end up using it as their sole investment proposition (more so after the FSA's report on wraps this week)

Robert Rosario

Their WRAP is not in general use as yet as far as I am aware. It is already established internally as I have seen it in Edinburgh, but not on general release to IFA's as yet, as we are one of the first 100 firms in the country to be using it.

Agree though that it is "likely" to be huge, but time will tell. It does look good though, and is easily the most user friendly system. Depends how discounts stack up though against Transact, Lifetime, etc which already have market share.

powerwrx

iTrader: (11)

ive got 250 shares,gonna cash them straight away before the goverment come in or someone and say i cant have the money because the queen needs some new tights

The Snug Rhino

its with trial IFAs now- general relase soon.

Mark Miwurdz

I'm flogging my 842 shares. SL is not loved by the city right now and anyway, I have plans for the cash.

Cheers
Kav

Hol

iTrader: (1)

Hands up all those who work in retail investment or life assurance

Trout

iTrader: (1)

The financial editor of the Evening Standard did a piece on this today.

He says ha cannot decide whether to buy more or not. If you buy and the shares stay exactly the same price and you sell after a year your return will be 14% inclusive of discount, bonus shares and dividend.

The market price discount should have already been applied by lowering the float price. The risk is that both Norwich Union and Friends Provident have not maintained their float prices.

FP is at a 30% discount and NU is now just breaking even after 10 years, although five years ago would have given about a 100% return.


Also in response to the comments above about market share - it depends how you define market. SLACs marketplace is the IFA and they are up with the market leader pretty much neck and neck with NU at between 12-13% market share.

Amaziingly with all their problems SLAC have managed to maintain this position for most of the last two years!!

The most likely route to high return however is a takeover, even with the opening up of the management team the city still sees it as too insular. Also Benny Higgins recently poached some of the favoured talent in his migration from RBoS to HBoS.

Rannoch

XRS

Just writing my cheque now.....

sunnybono

i have the option to buy with a 5% discount when they float. yah or nah? i cant decide. cheers

Mick

iTrader: (1)

We've got 676 shares to come - decided to keep them to get the 5% bonus for 12 months holding...


Cheers

Mick

XRS

End of year review:

Closed at 2.9575

Floated at 2.185.

35% return so far

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Plus the 5% bonus to come and returns from first year dividends so nearer 43%.

A friend of mine bought £100,000!!!

Rannoch