As assiduous readers will remember, FIG.PR.A was the “target security” in a four way merger earlier this year.
In what was presumably an effort to ensure that each class of shareholder got their due, FIG.PR.A paid a partial dividend of 0.05308 on 2007-2-9 to holders of record 2007-1-31. They then paid the balance ($0.10317) of the regular quarterly amount on 2007-4-2 to holders of record 2007-3-22.
Unfortunately, this sort of thing gives HIMIPref™ stomach-ache. There are several layers of checks built into the system to ensure that quarterly dividends are recorded quarterly, by billy-dam, or at least approximately. The good old Argus preferreds, for instance, have been in default for … a while … but on every dividend date I dutifully put in a dividend of $0.0001, just so the programmatic editors will see the entry and tick off their lists. There’s a wobble allowed, so that issuers like ABK.PR.C with their idiosyncratic ideas regarding the definition of “regular” and “quarterly” don’t cause me too many problems.
However, things like special dividends throw me for a loop. I can handle it on redemptions, but not with a continuing security. Therefore:
1: The dividend of 0.05308 paid 2/9 has been deleted from HIMIPref™
2: The dividend of 0.10317 paid 4/2 has been entered on the system as $0.15625.
This approximation means that intra-period returns on FIG.PR.A will be miscalculated.
It also means that in simulations, returns on holdings of FCN.PR.A / FCF.PR.A & FCI.PR.A will be overstated. But it’s either that, or re-write my edit routines to be even more complicated (which I might do eventually, but hardly seems worthwhile right now) or scrap my editors (which, given the number of times they’ve saved my hide, seems to me to be the worst option).