Why would a company have 2 listings on the same exchange?
A company can issue different kinds of shares. For example, some kinds of shares may get preference in dividends or payment in event of (company) bankruptcy. Preferred shares are an example of this. A company might have several kinds of preferred shares and a 'common stock'. Here is a good explanation. See too the Wikipedia article about preferred stock. Toronto-Dominion Bank (TD) is an example of a company that has fourteen different preferred share issues, each with its own listing on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSE) and symbol. TD has one kind of common stock, which is also listed on the TSE. However, TD common equity trades much more actively than the preferred shares. Remember that preferred stock is a different security type than common stock e.g. common has voting rights, preferred does not. Some companies like Royal Dutch Shell have multiple share classes to suit the tax regimes in Holland and the UK the A shares have dutch withholding tax applied and the B shares dont.  Also some split capital investment trusts have multiple share classes http://www.trustnet.com/Education/Split.aspx?ms=1
for full disclosure I'm an Independent Contractor and work with Jeff Richman. @ Neil:  Question 1: How legitimate is this?  If you were never contacted by the company you would never know about the money. Period, end of story. Not trying to be rude but that is the bottom line truth. Look up asset recovery businesses. They are in every city almost. They work for individuals, governments and businesses. Very legitimate business. Question 2: Since this doesn't seem to be the case, how does this company know that I potentially have unclaimed assets to claim?  I understand your concern and the best analogy I can think of to explain this is:  A company's copier breaks down. A copy machine repair man is called. He shows up and opens the copier and studies it intensely and closes it back up. He takes a hammer out of his bag and hits the copier on the side in two different places, twice. The copier starts working. He charges the company owner a $1000.00. The company owner is glad to pay it because without the knowledge of the repair man, his business is not making money. This is the same: The professionals at Keane have specific knowledge about how to, where to and who to ask for these lists. Granted, it's not your business we're talking about here but without them, you get nothing.  2 professionals have advised you to move forward; your brother's accountant and lawyer. Take the money. It costs you nothing. If they want money from you up front or want you to pay for stuff, run. would buying the stock of a REIT qualify as a 'Like-Kind' exchange? Short answer, no. Long answer, a 1031 (Starker) exchange only applies to real estate.  From the Wikipedia page on the topic: To qualify for Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, the properties exchanged must be held for productive use in a trade or business, or for investment. Stocks, bonds, and other properties are listed as expressly excluded by Section 1031 of the Internal Revenue Code, although securitized properties are not excluded. A REIT, being stock in a real estate company, is excluded from Section 1031. You pointed out that HFT does not create ipods are mine minerals.  Neither does human trading. HFT is a proxy for human trading.  Although the computer is executing trades automatically based on an algorithm, it is still using money from a human being's account so the trading is still being done with someone's money. Fast execution of trades is desirable in exchanges.  Imagine two exchanges:  One only executes trades once a month, the other executes trades once a week.  Which exchange would be more desirable?  The exchange that trades once a week.  Why?  Because if I'm holding a stock that I would like to sell, I want to sell it now - not a month from now.  Same reason for buying.  This concept works all the way down to seconds and fractions of seconds. The issue with HFT, however, is there are cases where the market goes against the HFT algorithm and the algorithm continues to execute trades driving prices up or down by large amounts in the matter of minutes or even seconds. The exchange frequently cancels these trades which only encourages more aggressive HFT trading since HFT traders can have their losses cancelled.  This is a privilege that LFTs (low frequency traders) do not receive.  This is a valid criticism of HFTs. A short list of such cancelled trades: 8/26/2010: Nasdaq cancels trades of CORE stock 10/4/2010: Nasdaq cancels trades of CENX stock 10/15/2010: NYSE cancels trades of PAY stock 10/18/2010: NYSE cancels $500 million worth of SPY trades 5/18/2011: NYSE cancels 15,900 trades of BEE.PR.C 6/21/2011: Nasdaq cancels CNTY trades 12/2/2011: London Metals Exchange cancel trades of copper "I don't have anything definitive, but in general positions in a company are not affected materially by what is called a corporate action. ""Corp Actions"" can really be anything that affects the details of a stock. Common examples are a ticker change, or exchange change, IPO (ie a new ticker), doing a split, or merging with another ticker. All of these events do not change the total value of people's positions. If a stock splits, you might have more shares, but they are worth less per share. A merger is quite similar to a split. The old company's stock is converted two the new companies stock at some ratio (ie 10 shares become 1 share) and then converted 1-to-1 to the new symbol. Shorting a stock that splits is no different. You shorted 10 shares, but after the split those are now 100 shares, when you exit the position you have to deliver back 100 ""new"" shares, though dollar-for-dollar they are the same total value. I don't see why a merger would affect your short position. The only difference is you are now shorting a different company, so when you exit the position you'll have to deliver shares of the new company back to the brokerage where you ""borrowed"" the shares you shorted." When a delisting happens, the primary process involves, the firm or the entity, trying to buy everyone out so that they can take the firm private by delisting from the stock exchanges. As the firm wants to buy everyone out, the current owners of the equity have the upper hand. They wouldn't want to sell if they believe the firm has a brighter future. So to compensate the existing holders, the buyer needs to compensate the current holders of any future loss, so they pay a premium to buy them out. Hence the prices offered will be more than the current existing price. And in anticipation of a premium the stocks price rises on this speculation. The other scenario is if the current holder(s) decide no to sell their holdings and are small in number, dependent on exchange regulations, and the buyer manages to de-list the stock, the holders might loose out i.e. they have to find another buyer who wants to buy which becomes difficult as the liquidity for the stock is very minimal. if any stock is DE-listed and then we can not trade on it,  In India if the promoters capital is more than 90%, he can get the stock de-listed. There is a process, he has to make an open offer at specified price to minority shareholders. The minority shareholder can refuse to sell. Once the stock is de-listed, it means it cannot be traded on a given exchange. However you can still sell / buy by directly finding a buyer / seller and it's difficult compared to a listed stock. On NASDAQ the ^ is used to denote other securities and / to denote warrents for the underlying company. Yahoo maybe using some other designators for same. "A ""stock price"" is nothing but the price at which some shares of that stock were sold on an exchange from someone willing to sell those shares at that price (or more) to someone willing to buy them at that price (or less). Pretty much every question about how stock prices work is answered by the paragraph above, which an astonishingly large number of people don't seem to be aware of. So there is no explicit ""tracking"" mechanism at all. Just people buying and selling, and if the current going price on two exchanges differ, then that is an opportunity for someone to make money by buying on one exchange and selling on the other - until the prices are close enough that the fees and overhead make that activity unprofitable. This is called ""arbitrage"" and a common activity of investment banks or (more recently) hedge funds and specialized trading firms spun off by said banks due to regulation." These markets are independent, just like any other stock market. For example, there are stocks on the Milan stock exchange that are also on the New York stock exchange and have different historical prices. Remember, this is all about offer and demand. The Hong Kong stock exchange has the Hong Kong Dollar as its currency, which is anchored to the USD. Also, there is more trade going on, on the Hong Kong stock exchange. As for the answer, I don't know whether these stocks are exactly the same. I guess they should be, but maybe somebody else could answer that.