Re: Spin-Off Reporting Problems

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In Reply to: Spin-Off Reporting Problems posted by SteveS on February 06, 2006 at 20:02:46:

: My clients owned shares of MBNA bank, which spun-off into Bank of America after January 1st of this year. However, when I attempt to create a year 2005 Performance Report, it appears that the spin-off has already happened (the ownership is listed as Bank of America). Additionally, the reported capital is twice what it should be.

: Perhaps I'm missing something but these kinds of issues seem really critical for a program such as this not to miss, and it should be easy enough for the software to recognize when the spin-off transpired since I manually entered the requisite data.

: Also, it seems to me especially cumbersome that such transactions must be entered for each account repeatedly. A global entry function (a function that might affect like-transactions for separate portfolios) seems like a reasonable expectation for a piece of software attempting to address a professional investor's needs.

Hi SteveS,

I suspect you manually recorded the spin-off in part by changing the investment's name? This method will change the name in all reports, for all dates. I can see how this could be confusing.

Thanks for the feedback on making this easier. I do agree we have some work to do here, especially when you have the same sort of action happening repeatedly in multiple accounts.

Thanks,
Mark
--
Mark Beiley
Fund Manager, portfolio management software for Windows 95/98/ME/NT/00/XP/2003

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