What Are Sundry Assets?

Sundry assets (also called ‘special assets’ or ‘unique assets’ or ‘non-traded securities’ as well as many other names) refers to all types of securities that do not trade on an exchange and therefore are difficult to price. Some of the most common types of sundry assets include stocks issued by privately-owned companies; limited and general partnership interests; privately-issued bonds, notes and other debt instruments; real estate mortgages; and hedge funds.

The number of domestic sundry assets issued and outstanding today cannot be determined with certainty because no central clearinghouse tracks such information, but the most informed estimate the number exceeds twenty million based on the fact that there are over 6.6 million domestic businesses that have issued stocks, partnership interests or other equity securities; and unknown numbers of bonds, notes, mortgages and other debt instruments.

To estimate how many domestic equity issues exist today, for example, the following table illustrates information compiled by the Internal Revenue Service about domestic business enterprises filing tax returns in 1999. Approximately 5.1 million corporations filed tax returns, and another 1.6 million partnerships did for a total of about 6.6 million businesses. By law when a company incorporates, it must issue at least one class of stock. (In fact corporations often issue more than one class of stock.)

Sundry assets almost never have a CUSIP number, as they are not publicly traded. Indeed as the following chart suggests, far less than 1% of all domestic business enterprises are public companies.

	1. How many sundry assets does your institution hold (approximately)? 10-99 100-999 1,000+ 2. What types of accounts are they held in? ERISA IRA Trust Other (Specify) 3. How are they being valued now (e.g cost, $1, book value)? 4. How did you hear about SPARDATA?  Contact Information First Name: Last Name: Company: Address: City: State: Zip: Company Website : Phone: Email: I have read, understand and agree to SPARDATA's privacy policy.