United Utilities

[Bouleversee]

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Just before I left for a few days' holiday last week, I answered a phone call from what sounded like a young woman with an American accent who said she was calling about (I think she said) my United Utilities shares. The sound wasn't very clear so I said "the water company?" There was a silence and she rang off. I'm always wary of scam calls and that is probably what this one was and in view of the fund-raising exercise reported on here for Severn Trent, which I gather didn't include ordinary shareholders, I wonder whether scammers were trying to cash in by offering fake shares. It surely couldn't have been worthwhile as a genuine exercise by the company, could it? Did anyone else receive a similar call? I suppose it might have been the registrars wanting to know whether I wanted to sell or increase my fairly small holding but the caller didn't know what sort of company UU was.

Mods: If this is not the right board on which to discuss this, please feel free to move.

[yorkshirelad1]

Just before I left for a few days' holiday last week, I answered a phone call from what sounded like a young woman with an American accent who said she was calling about (I think she said) my United Utilities shares. The sound wasn't very clear so I said "the water company?" There was a silence and she rang off. I'm always wary of scam calls and that is probably what this one was and in view of the fund-raising exercise reported on here for Severn Trent, which I gather didn't include ordinary shareholders, I wonder whether scammers were trying to cash in by offering fake shares. It surely couldn't have been worthwhile as a genuine exercise by the company, could it? Did anyone else receive a similar call? I suppose it might have been the registrars wanting to know whether I wanted to sell or increase my fairly small holding but the caller didn't know what sort of company UU was.

Mods: If this is not the right board on which to discuss this, please feel free to move.

I'd concur with your view that the call was probably a scam.

• If you are one of the increasingly small/vanishingly rare number of shareholders that hold your UU in your own name (e.g. certficated/paper or CREST personal), the Registrars will know who you are.
• If you hold your UU shares via one of the usual platforms (e.g. HL, AJBell), then you will be the beneficial owner of the UU shares, and the name on UU's shareholder register will be the platform. In this latter case, UU will not have your personal contact details from the register, so any call to claiming to be from UU or their registrars about your UU shareholding will probably be a scam (there is a very rare exception to this where companies can request broker's nominees for the names of the beneficial holders, but that would be quite rare)

[Bouleversee]

Just before I left for a few days' holiday last week, I answered a phone call from what sounded like a young woman with an American accent who said she was calling about (I think she said) my United Utilities shares. The sound wasn't very clear so I said "the water company?" There was a silence and she rang off. I'm always wary of scam calls and that is probably what this one was and in view of the fund-raising exercise reported on here for Severn Trent, which I gather didn't include ordinary shareholders, I wonder whether scammers were trying to cash in by offering fake shares. It surely couldn't have been worthwhile as a genuine exercise by the company, could it? Did anyone else receive a similar call? I suppose it might have been the registrars wanting to know whether I wanted to sell or increase my fairly small holding but the caller didn't know what sort of company UU was.

Mods: If this is not the right board on which to discuss this, please feel free to move.

I'd concur with your view that the call was probably a scam.

• If you are one of the increasingly small/vanishingly rare number of shareholders that hold your UU in your own name (e.g. certficated/paper or CREST personal), the Registrars will know who you are.
• If you hold your UU shares via one of the usual platforms (e.g. HL, AJBell), then you will be the beneficial owner of the UU shares, and the name on UU's shareholder register will be the platform. In this latter case, UU will not have your personal contact details from the register, so any call to claiming to be from UU or their registrars about your UU shareholding will probably be a scam (there is a very rare exception to this where companies can request broker's nominees for the names of the beneficial holders, but that would be quite rare)

I gave my certificated UU shares to grandchildren years ago and assuming parents have done the necessary they should be in their ISAs by now. I do have a holding in my IWeb ISA but I don't think they would be phoning me even if there were an offer to buy further shares, so it does look like a scam attempt. I am ashamed to say I do still hold a few certificated shares which I should get rid of or transfer to ISA but the problem is finding the time to do the necessary with so many even more urgent things to deal with.