Tracking down details of loss on Eircom shares

I have a capital gains tax bill this year. I know I made a serious loss on the Eircom shares I bought back in 1999. Unfortunately, I have no record of the number of shares I bought. Could you advise me of a register where I could get information? I have tried to find a register of the shareholders at the launch, but have not had any luck.

Ms A.G., email

No matter how much we move on, Eircom is forever the ghost lurking at the back of the Irish investor’s closet.

The share registrar when Eircom was a public company was a group called Computershare. These are the people who managed the share register with the details of who owned what in terms of shares in the company.

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Every shareholder’s record has a specific shareholder number along with details of their name and address.

Of course, you can understand the registrar is not going to disclose these details willy nilly to anyone who contacts them purporting to be a long lost shareholder – even if they give a name and address that matches a shareholder record. Even before GDPR, there are plenty of data protection rules that mean Computershare could get into a world of trouble for being that loose with personal financial data.

I’ve spoken to the company and their advice is as follows. You need to write to the company’s Dublin office at Heron House, Corrig Road, Sandyford Industrial Estate, Dublin 18.

Your letter needs to confirm who you are but, critically, you will need to have this confirmation signed by an independent witness of standing – a lawyer or a Garda.

You will also need to include two copies of proof of address – a driving licence and/or utility bill will do. And if your address has changed since you bought the shares back in 1999, proof of that address would also be useful.

In general that could be letters posted to you about shareholder matters – we’ll come back to that – or any other documentation that you might keep with an old address following a move of house.

The other thing that would help, they say, is any communications from Computershare relating to the Eircom shareholding – notification of AGMs etc – or your account number – the shareholder reference number (SRN) – if you ever made a record of it.

Of course, from your letter, my guess is that you have no such record. At the risk of sounding like an old saw, I must emphasise again that it is crazily irresponsible for people to invest in shares and not ensure they keep a file with at least their SRN, their original shareholding and, ideally, any critical communications.

As your story shows, it can make life very difficult down the line when you have a tax bill that you want to minimise.

Please send your queries to Dominic Coyle, Q&A, The Irish Times, 24-28 Tara Street, Dublin 2, or email dcoyle@irishtimes.com. This column is a reader service and is not intended to replace professional advice