Why is Halifax refusing to accept my shares?

B.H. writes: I have been using Halifax Share Dealing for over 20 years. I read with interest about Primarybid’s service, and I applied successfully for shares in Draper Esprit plc. However, Primarybid then told me that Halifax refused to accept the shares into my portfolio. The Halifax website says nothing about why it would reject shares acquired via Primarybid, so I rang and after 90 minutes in a queue, Halifax simply told me that its dealer did not want to deal with them.

PRIMARYBID is a useful service that allows ordinary investors access to Initial Public Offerings, rather than those IPOs being the privileged province of the big financial institutions.

You used it to apply successfully for shares in Draper Esprit (recently renamed Molten Ventures), a venture capital firm that invests in technology companies. Normally, your shares would be passed to your broker, but Halifax Share Dealing would not accept them. Staff there tell me that this was not because Halifax has a blanket ban on shares bought through Primarybid. The problem was with Draper Esprit itself.

Halifax’s share dealing arm is intended for ordinary investors to trade in shares that are easily and freely bought and sold. But when Halifax looked at Draper Esprit’s own paperwork, it warned that typical investors were expected to be experienced traders, institutions, investors with professional advisers, or people wealthy enough to risk a complete loss.

Since Halifax was never intended for this, I cannot criticise its decision. You have reached the same conclusion and have told me you have now switched to a different broker that will accept your shares.