Pro lesson, preview locked
Unlock the full video and walkthrough with FinanceFlow Pro.
5:00Corporate Actions: What Happens to Your Shares
One morning you log in and own three times as many shares at a third of the price. Another day a new lot appears that you must pay for, or vanish. These are corporate actions, and most of them are pure arithmetic.
A corporate action is any event a company initiates that changes its securities, your share count, your cash, or your ownership stake. The custody chain (issuer → registrar/agent → the central depository like DTCC in the US or Euroclear/CREST in the UK → your broker) propagates it to your account automatically. The key distinction is mandatory (you get no choice, it just happens, e.g. a split or an all-cash merger) versus voluntary / mandatory-with-options (you must respond by a deadline, e.g. a rights issue or a tender offer). Miss a voluntary deadline and your broker applies the *default*, which can cost you money.
Unlock the full lesson with Pro
The complete walkthrough, rail map and quiz for Corporate Actions: What Happens to Your Shares, plus every Pro lesson in the library.