Chapter 20: Inheritance

When he said that the file had all the details, Will wasn’t kidding. The summary he’d first handed me had just four items on it: Instant Access Accounts, Investment Accounts, Bonds, and Company Shares. The rest of the file was divided into those four categories and contained statements for each different account and details of all the companies that I now held shares in. The list of companies was as surprising as it was fascinating. In all, I owned shares in fifty different companies. Most were worth around the five-hundred-pound mark, although one or two were much more and some much less. I guess that was down to how well each company was doing. In total, they were worth over twenty-five thousand pounds.

“I can’t believe I own shares in Marks & Spencer,” I said to Will when came back into the room. “And Barclays. Tesco. This is amazing. Did you choose which companies to buy?”

He shook his head. “These were your parents’ holdings. They were split equally between you and Vicky.”

“Oh. Right. I thought you ... Never mind. You know, most of these are really well known, but some I’ve never heard of. What does AstraZeneca do? Did I say that right?”

Will smiled. “They’re a big pharmaceutical company. Used to be part of ICI. You’ve heard of them, right?”

I nodded. “What about Aggreko?”

“Now, I’m not sure about them. Why don’t you google them when you get home?”

“Yeah. I think I will. Just out of interest, you know?”

He chuckled and I furrowed my brow. “What?”

“Nothing. I just take it that since you’re asking me about the public companies, you haven’t looked at the last page yet.”

As I flipped to the last page I said, “No, why, what’s on the last—No way!”

I could hear the smile in his voice as he said, “I believe the appropriate response is Yes way.”

“But ... I mean ... No fucking way.” I looked up at him. “Sorry. I just...”

“Surprised?”

“Shocked is more like it. How can I own...” I looked down at the page again. “A thousand shares?”

“One per cent of the company. Yes.”

“But I thought it was privately owned.”

“It is. You can’t buy these shares on the stock market.”

“So ... How?”

“Do you remember who I said you were descended from?”

The light dawned and I nodded. “William Phipps,” I said, now understanding the real significance of what he’d told me earlier.

“Exactly. When he died, Phipps left his shares in the company to his three daughters. And those shares have continued to be divided up and passed down the generations until your father was left with two per cent, which has now been split between you and Vicky.”

I stared at the file for a few seconds unable to quite believe what had happened over the past hour. I’d gone from a kid with nothing, not even parents, working hard at school to make something of my life, to having more wealth than I ever dreamed of and owning a part of the company that dominated my town and the lives of everyone living there. Suddenly, I noticed something was missing from the information in front of me.

“Why is there no value? All the other companies had values next to the number of shares. Why not here?”

Will sat on the edge of his desk. “All the other companies are publicly traded, so on any given day, you know how much each share is worth. The price is published on the stock exchange. The values in this file are based on the share price at the end of trading this past Tuesday but if you recompiled the figures today, the values would be different. In fact, I think most of them would have gone up—it’s been a good week.” He smiled.

“But, because Liddington-Phipps is privately owned it’s difficult to put a value on the shares. The company as a whole has a value as stated on their balance sheet, what they call the Book Price, and that’s the value we had to report to the government for Inheritance Tax purposes, but that doesn’t really reflect what the shares are worth. They’re really only worth what someone is willing to pay for them. If no one wants to buy them, then they aren’t worth anything per se, even though they do provide an income.”

“So, I could sell these shares? Even though they can’t be sold on the stock exchange.”

He nodded. “If someone were to make you an offer then you could sell them privately. But the only way you’d know if the offer was fair would be your own judgement. What are they worth to you?”

As I thought about this, all sorts of questions ran through my head. Forget all the other companies in the file, Liddington-Phipps was definitely the most interesting of my new assets.

“If I own one per cent...”

“Yes.”

“And Vicky owns one per cent...”

Will smiled. I think he knew what I was going to ask.

“Then who owns the other ninety-eight per cent?”

He pointed to the right-hand side of the desk. “In the top drawer, you’ll find a file marked Liddington-Phipps. It’s yours to keep.”

I found the file and gave him a puzzled look.

“I figured you’d be interested so I complied a little dossier for you. Should have everything you might want to know in it.”

“How do you know all this? How did you find out?”

“Most of that information is public record—it might be privately owned but it’s still a Limited Company and needs to file annual accounts and a register of shareholders at Companies House. But there’s a potted history of the company that explains a few things as well. I know that because ... Well, you are not my only client in Micester. I have ... let’s call it an involvement with the company on a professional level.”

I looked down the list of shareholders and one stuck out immediately. “You represent the Andrew Liddington Trust, don’t you?”