Orphan assets
LUCKIER still. I thought I had five shares in Oldham Estates and was pleased when Cazenove offered to buy them for £1.60 each. I had bought them to watch Harry Hyams, the chairman, wear his Mickey Mouse mask at the shareholders' meetings, but since those distant days they had been neither useful nor saleable, and I had long ago lost the certificates. Caz were kind enough to sort this out, and even to tell me that I owned ten shares, not five. Now Lady Mackintosh of Halifax tells me that they could have found a good home with Sharegift, which takes odd lots of shares in, and sells them for the benefit of charities like Shelter, Sane and Sadler's Wells: 'The whole purpose of Sharegift is to make it easy for to you to give to charity any shares whose low value means they are really not worth selling in the conventional way.' Few unloved shares are fortunate enough to find a friend at Caz.
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