General Motors Loses `GM' Ticker in Canada to Miner, Tries to Get It Back
Michael England, the chief executive officer of Geo Minerals Ltd., was surprised when Canada’s junior stock exchange offered him the ticker symbol GM before his mining company went public in 2007. Now he says the “other” GM wants it back.
General Motors Co., which used the GM ticker in Canada from 1972 until it delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2005, has offered to pay Vancouver-based Geo Minerals to change its ticker, England said.
“They did call a few times, asking about the symbol” as recently as last month, England said in an interview yesterday as GM resumed trading following its $20 billion IPO. “We never really came to anything out of it.”
GM trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the GM ticker, as it did before going through bankruptcy protection. In Canada, it settled for the symbol GMM.
“We would have liked to have used that symbol, but it was already taken,” said Jason Easton, a spokesman for GM Canada. “I don’t think it’s a problem. Our ticker symbol here is GMM, and we know our investors are informed.”
It would be hard to confuse the two companies. General Motors is one of the world’s largest manufacturers, with $105 billion in sales last year, 209,000 employees and a market value of $51.3 billion.
Geo Minerals, a copper miner, has a market value of C$3.75 million ($3.68 million) and paid its chief financial officer C$17,500 last year. Its IPO raised less than one-20,000th the amount of GM’s, and the stock closed yesterday at 7 cents. General Motors closed at $34.01 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.
Warranty Calls
Still, the ticker symbol does mix up a few people, said England, whose company owns a zinc, gold and copper project in northern British Columbia and parts of four copper projects in Arizona.
“Over the years, we do get random calls, people calling about warranties and stuff, down south in the States,” England said. “We have to tell them, ‘No, we’re not them.’”
When Geo Minerals listed on the TSX Venture Exchange, the symbol GEO was in use by Polaris Geothermal Inc., which was purchased by Ram Power Corp. last year.
“When we were IPO’ing, they asked me for what symbols would I like to have,” England said. “They got me to send them a couple of choices in case they were taken. I thought ‘Oh, GM! Wouldn’t that be funny!’ And I got it! I was so surprised!”
No rules prevent a company from choosing a ticker symbol that is another firm’s name, as long as the symbol hasn’t been used in Canada for at least a year, said Carolyn Quick, a spokeswoman for the Toronto exchange.
Not GE
In Canada, the symbol GE belongs to Granville Pacific Capital Corp., which owns three residential care facilities in British Columbia. CBS is the symbol of Bard Ventures Inc., an oil and gas explorer formerly called Consolidated Bard Silver & Gold Ltd. Unique Broadband Systems Inc., which has no active operations, trades under the symbol UBS.
The exchange owns the symbols, Quick said. A company can request a new symbol for C$1,000, according to the TSX Company Manual.
Easton declined to comment on England’s statement that GM has inquired about buying the rights to the GM symbol.
England said he’s still willing to make a deal.
“The door is open, definitely,” he said.
To contact the reporter on this story; Matt Walcoff in Toronto at mwalcoff1@bloomberg.net
Sean Pasternak in Toronto at spasternak@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scanlan at dscanlan@bloomberg.net
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