Anyone interested in a share of 7903?

Not even sure if this is the right place to put this or whether it should be in another topic.

Either way, Facebook deems my sale as "not allowed" so I thought I'd try my luck here.

I want to sell my share of 7903 Foremarke Hall. Purchased in 1998 for £200 and is No. 227. Shares are no longer available in 7903, so this is a unique opportunity to become a shareholder.

I have confirmed in the past with the group chairman, that private sales and exchanges are permitted.

Reason for sale - I'm a member of the S&CR where the loco was originally restored, however it seems it will not return in any permanent basis and it seems a waste to hold onto something that I'm not "getting the best out of" so to speak - so passing this on to someone who is local to the loco and might want to be part of the group.

Asking for what I paid, which is £200. Worth a punt, I'm sure.

 

It is not obvious that this is a share in an incorporated entity which rather begs the question of what the nature of the "share" is?

 

I think it is ownership of a proportion of the locomotive, the exact proportion would be 1/number of issued shares.
It would be interesting to see if there could be a secondary "market" for such railway/locomotive shareholdings now that they are an established financial method of funding.

 

why not donate your share to the Group thereby relieving them of an obligation

 

@Azrall

I've had a bit of a hunt around the Internet. As I understand it:

The Foremark Hall Group website confirms that "The project has been funded by selling ownership shares in the loco within the Foremarke Hall Transport Group.".

http://www.7903foremarkehall.co.uk/History.html

However the website home page states that it is "Trading as 7903 Ltd, Company Registration Number 05674378. Companies House confirms that 7903 Limited was incorporated in 2006, obviously after your share was issued.

https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/05674378

Relevant documents are under the "Filing History" tab but can't be linked to directly. The 2006 incorporation document (Filing History page 3) includes a very brief Memorandum and Articles. Article 8 confirms that shares would be issued to existing members in proportion to their current shareholdings. On the good news front, the latest Annual Return (Filing History Page 1) confirms that one share in 7903 Limited is held in the same name as your "Transport Group" certificate. Therefore it appears the new share, rather than the old share, is the one which may or may not be capable of being sold.

Article 9 confirms that (unless they are to be transferred to an existing member) the Directors must be notified and the Directors will organise a sale to an existing member at a price to be agreed mutually. Only if the Directors cannot find an existing member may the shares be sold to a third party. Therefore I would suggest double checking with the directors before completing the transaction.

 

Thank you for following that up. I see according to article 9 that failing reaching agreement with the directors, the auditors (if there are any) or other party eligible to be the auditor (if not) decide the price. Sale to an existing shareholder falls outside this article though according to the first sentence, and in practice one or more directors may previously have offered to purchase unwanted shares without troubling the membership. Looking at the rather brief accounts for 31 March 2022, there was £245,000 in cash and not much in the way of disclosed liabilities. On top of that, there is a loco, book value £31,000 but perhaps worth say £200,000+? So on an asset basis, with 1,074 shares in issue, one could come up with a value of over £400 for one share. There are lots of reasons of course that a potential buyer would say that one share is not worth anything like that.

BTW. I don't think article 8 says what you think it says - this is general rights issue language and the shares and members referred to in the article must refer to the shares and shareholders of 7903 Ltd. However, prima facie, as you say, it would be reasonable to assume that the Group "shareholders" received one share in 7903 Ltd for each Group "share", this presumably being covered by a separate document.