Do companies that get taken-over have to honour the old gift card/certificate?
It depends completely on the nature of the takeover. When a business is bought, the new owner takes on the obligations of the prior owner, the debts don't just go away. When a business files for bankruptcy, its debts may get discharged, and gift card holders can easily be the first ones to get nothing back. A case in point was Sharper Image who stopped honoring gift cards even while the doors were open as they filed for bankruptcy. I know this is old, but Joe Taxpayer is wrong.  When you dissolve a corporation in selling it, all liabilities go with the old owners and the new owners, smartly starting with a new corporation and taxpayer ID, start with a clean slate.  The only way this is not true is if the new owners did not change a thing legally and kept everything the same, other than there names, which would be entirely insane if you asked any lawyer in the country.  Gift cards are a touchy situation, if not negotiated in the deal, by law the new owners DO NOT have to take them.  Yes, it's good PR, but when there's a considerable amount of money out there it could bury the new owners by giving away free stuff.
Annuities, like life insurance, are sold rather than bought.  Once upon a time, IRAs inherited from a non-spouse  required the beneficiary to  (a) take all the money out within 5 years, or  (b) choose to receive the value of the IRA at the time of  the IRA owner's death in equal installments over the expected  lifetime of the beneficiary.  If the latter option was chosen, the IRA custodian issued the  fixed-term annuity in return for the IRA assets. If the IRA  was invested in (say) 15000 shares of IBM stock, that stock  would then belong to the IRA custodian who was obligated to  pay $x per year to the beneficiary for the next 23 years (say). There was no investment any more that could be transferred  to another broker, or be sold and the proceeds invested in Facebook stock (say).  Nor was the custodian under any  obligation to do anything except pay $x per year to the  beneficiary for the 23 years. Financial planners loved to get at this money under the old IRA rules by suggesting that if all the IRA money were taken out and invested in stocks or mutual funds through  their company, the company would pay a guaranteed $y  per year, would pay more than $y in each year that the  investments did well, would continue payment until the  beneficiary died (or till the death of the beneficiary  or beneficiary's spouse - whoever died later), and would return the entire sum invested (less payouts already made, of course) in case of premature death. $y typically would be a little larger than $x too, because it factored in some earnings of the investment over the years. So what was not to like? Of course, the commissions earned by the planner and the lousy mutual funds and the huge surrender charges were  always glossed over. It is totally legal but it just has to be reported like income. Granted the IRS will probably not catch it. I work for a large company I get little gift cards all the time and they add the dollar value as income for taxes on my paycheck. It is a little annoying because I think it is kind of shit that a dollar value of a gift card is treated as the same value as real money, but they are amazon gift cards so better than cash to me. "I don't think the reason is ""to verify that it is truly me"". It should be possible for someone else (friend, relative...) to make a payment on your behalf, using their own card. It is common that ""gift cards"" are not per-authorized for ""Card Not Present"" (CNP) use like on the internet, or over the phone. In many cases, you can register your card, online or by speaking to a representative over the phone. After that, you should be able to use it to pay your phone company. Also, depending on where you got the card, you may be able to go to a teller at the issuing bank, and withdraw cash (or get a check), possibly without a fee." Mr. Raphael Lilla is a business enthusiast, a philanthropist and an honoured member of the International Society of Business Leaders. He comes with over 20 years of experience working in the Swiss and International financial markets and is currently operating as the Executive Director of SBC Group AG, Switzerland, and as Managing Director of Swiss Bullion Company International LLC, Dubai. Lol you moron. Chip and pin significantly reduced physical retailer fraud when we introduced it in Europe (a decade ago? 15 years?) - a signature is absurdly easy to fake and retailers have little to no way of protecting against it. Agreed. What this settlement does is ensure that the people who committed the fraud are safe. The current management, employees, shareholders, and customers have nothing to do with what happened 7-10 years ago, but they are the ones that will end up paying to permanently close any potential liability to the people who commited fraud. "Yes, this is possible with some companies. When you buy shares of stock through a stock broker, the shares are kept in ""street name.""  That means that the shares are registered to the broker, not to you.  That makes it easy to sell the stock later.  The stock broker keeps track of who actually owns which shares.  The system works well, and there are legal protections in place to protect the investors' assets. You can request that your broker change the stock to your name and request a certificate from the company.  However, companies are no longer required to do this, and some won't.  Your broker will charge you a fee for this service. Alternatively, if you really only want one share for decoration, there are companies that specialize in selling shares of stock with certificates.  Two of them are giveashare.com and uniquestockgift.com, which offer one real share of stock with a stock certificate in certain popular companies.  (Note: I have no experience with either one.)  Some companies no longer issue new stock certificates; for those, these services sell you a replica stock certificate along with a real share of electronic stock.  (This is now the case for Disney and Apple.) With your stock certificate, you are an actual official stockholder, entitled to dividends and a vote at the shareholder meeting. If this is strictly an investment for you, consider the advantages of street name shares: As to your question on buying stock directly from a company and bypassing a broker altogether, see Can I buy stocks directly from a public company?" It looks like what you're calling a name change was registered as a merger that resulted in an exchange of stock.  If that's the case, then what you've been told is correct.  You've got one long-term sale and one short-term sale. Based a quick read of the Form 8937 that was filed, it looks like there were multiple entities involved in this event, more than one of which existed prior to it. https://www.mylan.com/-/media/mylancom/files/form%208937%20for%20mylan%20n%20v.pdf