Vanguard fund name & ticker change -- how to record?

Posted by John Blaustein on May 2, 2006, 10:04 pm

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I have two Vanguard funds. On 9/14/2005, Vanguard changed the name of the
two funds and also changed the ticker symbols. On the Vanguard Website, my
transaction history shows "Conversion" as the transaction type. One of the
funds kept the same share price (and same number of shares), but the other
fund changed price, so my number of shares changed.

At the time of the change, I think I made the wrong entries into Quicken
2006 H&B -- as I recall, I let Quicken do this when it downloaded the
Conversion transactions during my regular online download. First, I entered
the new securities (new names and symbols) into the Security List. Then, I
entered a transaction to Remove the shares for the old name and symbol and
then a transaction to Add shares for the new fund name and symbol. I
suspect Remove and Add are wrong, yet when I look at the dropdown list of
Actions in the Enter Transaction dialog, I'm just not sure which Action to
select.

Since 9/14/2005, Quicken has correctly added the ReinvDiv transactions for
each fund.

Any help here will be much appreciated.

John

Posted by danbrown on May 2, 2006, 10:14 pm

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1) make sure that the account holding the funds is NOT classified as
"single mutual fund" (check Q Help if you don't know how to do that)
2) Corporate Acquisition

QED

Posted by John Blaustein on May 2, 2006, 10:27 pm

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Dan,

Thanks for the quick reply.

The Quicken account is a brokerage account, not single mutual fund.

OK... I see Corporate Acquisition. Just to be sure, the "Company Acquired"
is the original fund, and the "Acquiring Company" is the new fund. Correct?

Am I correct that I can now simply delete my two Add and two Remove
transactions from 9/14/2005, and then add two Corporate Acquisition
transactions dated 9/14/05? I trust all of my ReinvDiv transactions since
9/14/2005 will remain as-is and that my share balance will end up correct.
Yes?

John

> 1) make sure that the account holding the funds is NOT classified as

> "single mutual fund" (check Q Help if you don't know how to do that)

> 2) Corporate Acquisition

> QED

Posted by John Blaustein on May 3, 2006, 10:08 pm

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Dan,

Well... something didn't work quite right.

I first deleted the two Add and two Remove transactions. Then I added a
Corp Acq. transaction as we discussed for one of the funds. When I clicked
Done, Quicken "went a bit nuts!" and added about two dozen transactions, one
after the other, leaving an account value of somewhere over a billion
dollars. I tried again for the second fund. Same result. I then deleted
all transactions starting at 9/14/05 to today and went to Vanguard.com and
downloaded all transactions starting 9/13/05. For some reason, the only
transactions in the download were the "remove" ones. So that was a
dead-end.

I had made a backup (of course), so I restored that and am back to where I
started. I called Vanguard but the online group had closed for the day. I
will call them tomorrow for help. I will let you know what happens.

John

> John Blaustein wrote:

>> OK... I see Corporate Acquisition. Just to be sure, the "Company

>> Acquired"

>> is the original fund, and the "Acquiring Company" is the new fund.

>> Correct?

> Corrrect

>> Am I correct that I can now simply delete my two Add and two Remove

>> transactions from 9/14/2005, and then add two Corporate Acquisition

>> transactions dated 9/14/05?

> Correct, but it's always safe to to a backup first ... just in case.

>> I trust all of my ReinvDiv transactions since

>> 9/14/2005 will remain as-is and that my share balance will end up

>> correct.

>> Yes?

> Each CorpAcq will change -- for the pertinent security -- all of your

> individual tax lots, as of 9/14/05, to the new security on a tax-lot by

> tax-lot basis, keeping the prior acquisition date and cost basis.

> I'm not entirely sure how it will handle post 9/14 transactions (I've

> never been in your precise situation). You MAY need to delete and

> re-enter them as the new security.

> db

Posted by John Blaustein on May 4, 2006, 12:52 pm

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I was suspicious of my input values too, so I tried the CorpAcq transaction
again. Same result.

I spoke with Vanguard and was fortunate to reach a person who knew exactly
what I was talking about. In fact, the guy uses Quicken himself.
Apparently, Quicken does not have the functionality to handle what Vanguard
calls a "Conversion." There's a work-around that involves a Sell and a Buy
(rather than Remove and Add), but it sounded complicated and I decided to
simply leave things as they are. Quicken accurately shows my account values
and performance for the new funds (since 9/14/05), but not since inception.
I can live with this.

I may send Inuit Tech Support an online request for their help, but I doubt
that will go anywhere.

Thanks again for your efforts, Dan.

John

> For the fund that kept the same # of shares and NAV (share price), you

> could just edit the security info. As a safety measure, DO NOT change

> both name and symbol at the same time -- use "Corporate Name Change",

> exit quicken, re-start quicken, change symbol.

> For the other ... what values did you enter on the CorpAcq transaction?

> CorpAcq DOES need to enter transactions for each tax lot for the

> security, but having increased the value makes me suspect your input

> values.

> Dan