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Rights Issues with Standard Chartered Bank (SCB) Online Trading

Standard Chartered have been late to the Singapore brokerage scene but attracted a lot of retail investors with

  1. No minimum commission
  2. Zero custody fees
  3. Low fees

But how well does SCB handled cash calls/rights issues? Turns out if you intend to hold stocks with SCB long term it actually handles rights issues quite well.

Why does this matter

From time to time, the stocks that you are holding in your SCB account need additional funding other than capital garnered during IPO. The stock can either raised debts or raise more equity, the latter being rights issues.

Rights issues gives the existing shareholder the right to increase his number of shares by investing more capital in addition to his original share purchase. If the investor do not wish to, he can sell off the rights so that he will not be diluted after the rights issues.

Rights issues are very common among capital intensive or high dividend payout companies such as REITs and utilities. If you are a dividend investor with income producing stocks like REITs and utilities, you would want to know whether SCB handles this well.

I recently went through a rights issue with LMIR and would like to share with readers my experience.

How SCB is different from CDP held shares

The difference here is that SCB is a sort of nominee account which means that you will not get letters of corporate action like you would if its shares held under CDP account normally.

As such, you will not received a letter telling you why LMIR wants more of your money, what is in it for existing share holders and all the important dates.

Upon closing of trading of rights entitlements, you will get a call from SCB asking whether you would like to take up the rights.

Know the important dates well

As you are unaware of important dates, it becomes important for you to keep track of important dates. It is important that you do that because

  1. You want to know when LMIR go ex rights and price drops off to TERP price
  2. You want to know when the rights start trading if you want to sell the rights if you do not wish to participate in the rights issue or if you feel the rights are cheap you can buy the rights
  3. When is close of rights entitlements and the last date and time you can accept the rights. If you missed this date you would not be able to participate.

SCB Service

I did not own any LMIR shares previously, so I had to purchase the rights between the 10th to 18th of November and I got them at an average price of $0.04 which make my average price at $0.35.

Whether you purchase the rights or you own the shares before 10th of November, SCB customer service will call you to ask you

  1. Whether you would like to take up the rights
  2. Whether you would like to subscribe to excess rights

Now here is the things to note:

  1. After the close of the entitlement, make sure you monitor your mobile phone because SCB will only have a small window to call you. I received a call on the 19th at 10 am telling me that I need to respond by 12 pm that day and I was in a meeting without my phone!
  2. Make sure that you know whether you are entitled to excess rights. The customer service person may be inexperience to know that but if you know you are entitled you need to check with them. By default the customer service person will raised it to you if you are entitled to it. It should be noted that because I do not own the shares originally I cannot subscribe to excess rights. It took my relation manager to explain this to me.
  3. Once you make your decision you need to ensure that you have enough funding in your SCB Settlement Account to buy the rights and excess rights. This goes the same as all your normal share purchase under SCB.
  4. The shares may be late in showing up on your SCB trading account. Mine only showed up on 6th Dec, 1 day after it started trading on the 5th.

Conclusion

I hope I provided you with enough info on how this unique brokerage handles rights issues. It is not really too much hassle I feel but its just frustrating that they only had a small window to get your request.

I run a free Singapore Dividend Stock Tracker . It  contains Singapore’s top dividend stocks both blue chip and high yield stock that are great for high yield investing. Do follow my Dividend Stock Tracker which is updated nightly  here.

Kyith

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Jan

Wednesday 11th of May 2016

hi there jus wondering if you know how standard chartered would deal with stock splits? thank you!

Kyith

Thursday 12th of May 2016

hi Jan, from my experience they will just split the units like normal.

stockpick

Wednesday 11th of February 2015

Hi. Just came across your blog. Thanks for your review.

Does SCB allow holding of cash in different currencies? Is foreign-currency denominated dividend income automatically converted to SGD at bank's rate or there is a choice to keep it in original currency?

Jonathan

Tuesday 20th of January 2015

Since the shares u buy is held at SCB. which means you don't own the shares 100%. what if scb closes down one day. what will happen to the shares own by you?

Kyith

Friday 23rd of January 2015

Hi Jonathan, to operate locally they are regulated by mas. When scb close down mas would arrange for a custodian to take over. Usually the trustee for each bank is different.

Alex

Saturday 20th of July 2013

Hi, came across your post on SCB. I'm actually new to this trading scene, I have been reading around and hence settled down with SCB to commence on my trading journey. I have been exploring but couldn't find an answer to this; can I buy IPO shares via my SCB?

Regards

Kyith

Saturday 20th of July 2013

you need a CDP account for that and SCB is not linked to CDP account. so you cannot use SCB

SnOOpy168

Monday 19th of December 2011

Hi hi

Thanks for the insight for SCB platform.

Just noted that LMIR is not on your dividends tracker. Would you be updating this soon ?

Many thanks in advance.

SnOOpy168

Drizzt

Tuesday 20th of December 2011

hi Snoopy! its actually there under REIT-RET-Mapletree Indo.

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