How the Brokerages get your shares after the Cusip change.
Currently your shares at the brokerage is held in street name. The street name is Cede & Company (subsidary of the DTC). When your broker is notified of the CUSIP change, they contact Cede & Company electronically telling them how many shares they have in all of their individual accounts based on the exact date of the CUSIP and symbol change. Cede & Company then accumulates all of the brokerages requests and then electronically makes the request to the Transfer Agent to replace the total number of shares with the new Cusip #/symbol change shares. Now this is where Clayton MUST get involved. He must notify the T/A of how many legal shares the T/A can dispense to Cede & Co. because they are the owners of the stock. If the T/A is not told of the true number of legal shares by Clayton, they will issue all of the stock being requested by Cede & Co. and in return they will electronically notify each brokerage that the replacement has been completed and you can now update your clients account with the new shares. This would eliminate the entire short position we all know is on the street. If the T/A tells Cede & Co. there are too many shares in their request based on what the Company says are legal, then Cede & Co. electronically tells the brokerages there cannot be a conversion as the brokerages have sold too many shares to facilitate the exchange and they need to solve the problem with their clients. That is when the brokerages start looking into why this has occurred and if it was because clients sold dividend shares they rightfully DID NOT own those clients are contacted to cover their short position immediately. This whole process takes about 3 weeks from the T/A notification to Cede & Co. that there request for the replacement shares exceeds the legal amount of shares that should be on the street. It is the brokerages who have to initiate the short squeeze not the MM's! The MM's have no direct contact with the clients who sold shares they were not entitled to, its the brokerages problem to resolve this with their client. Remember the whole process takes about 3 weeks or sooner to complete so don't expect a pop when the CUSIP changes, unless those people who sold and knew they did illegally starts to buy back shares they sold because they know they will have to eventually. I got this information from a very experienced management person of a full service brokerage firm.
AI
