Hi there,

Hope you can help a bit of a shares numpty here with a problem on the best way to find out what happened to my Interactive Investor International shares.

I have a few shares from the various utilities coys which I was bought by my parents a good few years back. During the dot com frenzy I also bought some III shares - yes I know, dont say it! These promptly bombed in the dot com bust and I put it down to experience and expected to see nothing else from the firm.

However, now I want to take all my individual shares and invest in a fund and before I do, am trying to track down what happened to III on the shares front. I did receive some papers a long time ago when I was younger and not too interested in paperwork, and decided to ignore it as the price had dropped so far i was expecting III to fold.

However, it is still going as a web site and I still have the share certificate. I know it has been through a few changes of hands, having initially been acquired by AMP and then Ample with Tomas Carruthers featuring in all the various stages of ownership. I have tried the various share registrars who do not list it and have searched for an investor relations contact at both iii and Ample without luck and I can't see them listed on any of the main stock listings.

I am not expecting them to be worth anything, but in the interests of tidying things up, does anyone have any ideas of how a newbie would go about confirming this. Is it a worthless piece of paper or am I likely to have got shares in Ample or AMP that I know nothing about.

Grateful for any help or suggestions you might be able to give to a novice.

Regards

Melchett

Melchett:

I just saw your post.

If you telephone the interactive investor contact centre on 0845 88 00 267 during business hours then you can get the address of the fund which exists for buying out the remaining public market shareholders of the Company, which was acquired for fifty-five million pounds by AMP in August 2001.

In brief: shareholders who voted in favour of the sale at that time had their shares redeemed for cash: shareholders who didn't vote -- for example, because they had lost their certificate - remain entitled to the same payment, and a fund for this purpose is still operated by AMP's successor company in the United Kingdom, Henderson PLC.

So your shares have a cash value.

/topcat