Lawrence "The Dreamer" Chen's Blog

Not sure who did it, but I'm mad

A long time ago, when I owned the REB1200 eBook Reader from Gemstar....I bought stock in this company called Gemstar. Which then merging with TV Guide and among other things came crashing down. They also eventually got out of the eBook Reader business. Probably because they charge the list price of a hardcover book for the electronic version. And, you can't share the electronic version at all, where as the printed version you got something physical that could be (or at least I could show off on my bookshelf [where I never have people over], and then many years later try to donate to my local library.) Worse was the magazine subscriptions on eBook. Even though they had all the same content....you paid full price, as opposed to the substantially lower news stand or print subscription price for these.

And, then the plan that Barnes & Noble would be the online seller of content and the wide selection of titles not happening, just made things worse. There was pretty much very little out there for it, and there was no supported way of adding your own content to it. Plus I could get a laptop for less than what I paid for it now.

Part of them held out though...because I thought the Gemstar eBook Reader and TV Guide combination might be a good thing....though they never offered TV Guide as a publication for the eBook Reader, and even if they did...they would probably have charged some price 100x more than newsstand price or something.

I really haven't looked at e-book devices much since...though the Kindle seems neat, but I'd have to research it more before I decide if I want to use it to launch myself back into reading books again (that is other than technical work-related books, where I want the physical book for reference and office collaboration, etc.) But, being Amazon.com probably gives them the edge over other e-book devices. If it had looked cooler, I'd probably have taken a closer look right away

Anyhoo....along comes Macrovision to acquire Gemstar. It is fast becoming not the company that I had original become a shareholder in. I had hung on this long because my cost basis for the company was about 11.50 a share, and I was in some kind of hope that I could at least get out even.

Well, Macrovision offered to acquire Gemstar stock at either 0.2548 shares of their stock (MVSN) for Gemstar stock (GMST), or $6.35 in cash.

I received a letter from TD Ameritrade saying that (by the time I received it) I needed to call them within the next two days to make my election...for either cash or stock for my 50 shares.

I elected for cash. Which would've meant that I should've received $6.35x50 - $30 (reorg fee) = $287.50 for my stock.

What TD Ameritrade did instead was they converted my 50 shares of GMST to some other less quantity of stock 28.651 shares, and sold that at 6.35. Result $6.35x28.651 - $30 = $151.93

That is $135.57 less than what I had agreed to.

Follow up:

The answer is Macrovision.... Apparently so many Gemstar shareholders opted to take cash rather than Macrovision stock...that the cash pool wouldn't allow them to pay out the full $6.35/share.