Hello,

My Aunt inherited stocks in 1975 which later became Verizon. She has Alzheimer's so she cannot help. I need a price for Verizon as of March 7, 1975.

She now has 226 shares of Verizon. Can anyone help me to get a cost basis or starting point going back from this? As far as the old records, imagine a harder with Alzheimer's disease. That avenue is not useful.

Computer share the transfer agent could not help. Thank you very much.

DLS

Verizon didn't exist in 1975, but AT&T Corp did. So what she must have done is inherit stock in AT&T Corp (Symbol "T"). Then in 1984 when divestiture of AT&T occurred she would have received stock in one or more of the new "Baby Bells" - investors had discretion to specify which of the baby bells they wanted to receive stock in. Without records it's impossible to guess exactly how much of her original investment in AT&T ended up with the baby Bell that was the precursor to Verizon (which was called Bell Atlantic). Then to further complicate things Bell Atlantic merged with NYNEX to form Verizon, then absorbed one of the cellular phone companies (I forget which), etc etc.

My advice is call the shareowner services department at Verizon and see if they have records that will allow you to figure a cost basis. See: Shareowners Services | About Verizon (http://www.verizon.com/about/investors/shareowner-services)

Don't get your hopes up. I had stock in GM before they got bailed out by the gov't, not so many years ago.
Somehow they managed to wipe out all their stock and start over. I got nothing.

Thank you very much for your response. I will contact the Verizon Shareowners Services.

Verizon came from GTE-Bell Atlantic merger in 2000. My 1974 GTE is now Verizon, never had any Bell stock. Each quarterly dividend shows cost basis.

Which points out that at this point we don't know whether the aunt's original inheritance in 1975 was old AT&T Corp stock (not be confused with the current embodiment of AT&T Inc, which is an entirely different company) or GTE stock. Just to add more confusion: VZ bought out MCI WorldCom in 2005 and wireless carrier Alltel in 2008, so it's possible that the aunt started with stocks in one of those companies.