Asyst Technologies, Inc. (fka ASYTQ)

[trader53]

"...a BK company's shares can bop around for pennies or nickels a share for quite some time. At a certain point they simply won't be tradeable anywhere though. It would surprise me if that isn't the case already for a stock whose registration as a security was suspended in March."

Answer
Hi Sammie-
Thanks for your question - believe it or not questions about stocks in bankruptcy are some of the most frequent ones I get on this site.

Based just on what you've written (I haven't verified any of this) it sounds like your stock was officially toast as of March 2010. It couldn't really be much clearer than "common stock was canceled and has no future value."

Given that this is a Chapter 11 reorg, you may eventually see new shares of stock in the company trade on an exchange. But those shares might as well be in a completely different company - in effect, it is a different company and they have nothing to do with the canceled shares. Canceled means...well, canceled. Kaput, toast, gone, etc. Fundamental to bankruptcy is that the equity shareholders are wiped out when the BK plan includes cancellation (as it almost always does).

It's common to see those original shares continue to trade for a variety of technical reasons, including the large number of people who for whatever reason buy them despite the fact that they're worthless. A big example of this was the special stock for the bankruptcy assets of GM which were clearly described as having no value...including a special notice by the SEC:
www.sec.gov/investor/alerts/bankruptcygmalert.htm

So a BK company's shares can bop around for pennies or nickels a share for quite some time. At a certain point they simply won't be tradeable anywhere though. It would surprise me if that isn't the case already for a stock whose registration as a security was suspended in March.

http://en.allexperts.com/q/General-Stock-Investment-1068/2010/10/Cancelled-Shares.htm