How can a preferred stock be liquidated below its issue price when reports are not filed?

Question

I was reading an article about Income Investment Risks, where "reports might not be filed" was mentioned as one of the risks of investing in fixed-income securities (presumably preferred stock in this case):

REPORTS MIGHT NOT BE FILED - Some prospectuses say that the security can be liquidated if reports aren't filed. I never took that danger too seriously until some Verizon securities were liquidated for that reason. Not called at $25, liquidated for less. In the Verizon cases, securities issued just months before at $25 were liquidated for a lot less, because the market price had dropped.

Specific questions:

• In the context of the excerpt above, what is a "report"? How does not filing this report justify liquidation below the face value?
• How does this liquidation work? Will there be some kind of announcement, followed by a cash deposit into my brokerage account? Will this cash deposit be equal to the market value of the preferred shares at the time of liquidation?
• The article mentions "some Verizon securities" that were liquidated because "reports aren't filed". Which Verizon securities? It would be helpful to know, so that I could do a case study.

Answer 1

QuantumOnline cites six basic types of exchange-traded fixed income investments available to the individual investor:

• preferred stocks

• trust preferred securities

• third party trust preferreds

• exchange-traded debt securities

• convertible preferreds

• mandatory convertible securities

So as you can see, Quantum is not just a site for information on preferred stocks.

Your link discusses some things that can go wrong when buying exchange-traded fixed income investments. This is a generic statement and I suspect that you may have jumped to the conclusion that it was specifically about preferred stocks. However, I do not offer that as fact.

I'd suggest that you do some googling to determine what Verizon securities were liquidated below their par value and if indeed they were preferred stocks. Once located, you'll need to take a deep dive into the prospectus to look for special language and provisions.

While it has nothing to do with Verizon, here's an example of such language:

Southern Company is a major utility that supplies states from Illinois to Georgia. It has 5 Junior Subordinated Notes listed on Quantum. Buried in the prospectuses is a clause stating that:

The Southern Company may defer interest payments ... on one or more occasions for up to 40 consecutive quarterly periods

In short, I think that you have more research to do regarding your Verizon conclusion. There may be some special provisions regarding liquidation price.