Method and apparatus for converting collectively owned investment accounts and pooled investment accounts and vehicles into individually owned accounts

摘要

Using an interface to a portfolio manager system, an existing collectively owned investment account can specify its existing assets and a percentage ownership in accounts of each of the individual owners of the collective account. The invention then distributes some or all of the collectively owned assets to some or all of the individual owners in proportion to their ownership interest in the collective account, thereby converting some or all of the collective account into individual accounts. Even if all of the collective account's assets are distributed to the individual owners, the collective account retains a residual-master account, which holds information about the assets, rights or liabilities that were in the collective account. The former managers of the collective account can then continue to manage the residual account and the former owners of the collective account can link the constituents of their individual accounts to the residual account. Each individual who converts his or her interest in the collective account into an individually owned account may continue to receive benefits from association with the collective account. For example, any changes in the residual-master collective account can be transmitted to the investor who may either automatically accept them or who may choose to accept, modify or reject them. In this way, investors may enjoy the benefits of association with the collective account without any of the usual accounting and tax disadvantages, and managers of collective accounts can now distribute their management expertise easily over separate individual accounts.