How can my dad (grandpa) transfer shares to my 2 year old son?
"The most common way to handle this in the US is with a UTMA account. UTMA is the Uniform Transfers / Gifts to Minors Act (""UTMA"" or ""UGMA"") which is a standard model law that most states have passed for special kinds of accounts. Once you open an account, anyone can contribute. Usually parents and grandparents will contribute $13,000 or less per year to make it a tax free transfer, but you can transfer more. The account itself would just be a standard brokerage account of any sort, but the title of the account would include your son's name, the applicable law depending on your state, and the name of the custodian who would control the account until your son turned 18. When your son does turn 18, the money is his. Until then, the money is his, but you control how it's invested. I'm a huge fan of Vanguard for UTMA/UGMAs. You may prefer to diversify a bit away from one company by selling the GE shares and buying an index mutual fund so that your child's education is not jeopardized by a rogue trader bringing down General Electric sometime in the next decade..." A UTMA may or may not fit your situation. The main drawbacks to a UTMA account is that it will count against your child for financial aid (it counts as the child's asset). The second thing to consider is that taxes aren't deferred like in a 529 plan. The last problem of course is that when he turns 18 he gets control of the account and can spend the money on random junk (which may or may not be important to you). A 529 plan has a few advantages over a UTMA account. The grandparents can open the account with your son as the beneficiary and the money doesn't show up on financial aid for college (under current law which could change of course). Earnings grow tax free which will net you more total growth. You can also contribute substantially more without triggering the gift tax ~$60k. Also many states provide a state tax break for contributing to the state sponsored 529 plan. The account owner would be the grandparents so junior can't spend the money on teenage junk. The big downside to the 529 is the 10% penalty if the money isn't used for higher education. The flip side is that if the money is left for 20 years you will also have additional growth from the 20 years of tax free growth which may be a wash depending on your tax bracket and the tax rates in effect over those 20 years.
Two methods:  1: Become really close friend with Marky. Probably have to take a bullet for him or something.   2: Become a major client of the investment bank that will launch the IPO (most likely Goldman), and the bank will offer you some shares before the IPO. In order to become a major client you probably have to spend several millions per year in transaction fee. "I hate to point this out, but have you heard of this guy Trump, or Warren Buffet (although his son seems to be very competent and grounded, to some degree).   The US is also plagued with this problem where family companies remain so through leadership, they also tend to fail at greater rates than our publicly ran companies.  I suppose Samsung is public company, but why having stock on the open KRX doesn’t lead to better leadership is beyond me to understand?  EDIT:My bad for bringing Trump into this, it was meant as an example of wealth distribution which translates into capacity for business options, and he's well known. However you guys need to do some more research before throwing shade, Howard Buffet has taken over Berkshire Hathaway in a non-executive role, while also holding board positions on a multitude of companies in which BH own significant portions including coca-cola. I wasn't pointing out Warren is incompetent in any way, just he passed the reins off to family too in many ways. ""In December 2011, Warren Buffett told CBS News that he would like his son Howard to succeed him as Berkshire Hathaway's non-executive chairman.""  Apologies for lack of clarity in my statement." Pool their money into my own brokerage account and simply split the gains/losses proportional to the amount of money that we've each   contributed to the account. I'm wary of this approach due to the tax   implications and perhaps other legal issues so I'd appreciate   community insight here. You're right to be wary. You might run into gift tax issues, as well as income tax liability and appropriation of earnings. Not a good idea at all. Don't do this. Have them set up their own brokerage account and have them give me the   login credentials and I manage the investments for them. This is   obviously the best approach from a tracking and tax perspective, but   harder for me to manage; to be honest I'm already spending more time   than I want to managing my own investments, so option 1 really appeals   to me if the drawbacks aren't prohibitive. That would also require you to be a licensed financial adviser, at least to the best of my understanding. Otherwise there's a lot of issues with potential liability (if you make investments that lose money - you might be required to repay the losses). You should do this only with a proper legal and tax advice - from an attorney and/or CPA/EA licensed in your state. There are proper ways to do this (limited partnership or LLC, for example), but you have to cover your ass-ets with proper operating agreements in place that have to be reviewed by legal counsel of each of the members/partners, For this rollover, there are no restrictions of age/income/etc.  You need to know - the transfer must be direct, i.e. if you get a physical check, it should be payable not to you, but to the new custodian (broker) for your benefit. Direct is preferable and faster. The assets may not be transferable 'in kind.' This phrase simply means that you may move the value, but if the assets are not shares that are held by the public, but special 401(k) class shares, they must be liquidated before moving, and moved as cash. This is a risk people with large accounts take should the market move dramatically during the time they are liquidated, and why, for them, I suggest doing it piecemeal. "BigCo is selling new shares and receives the money from Venturo. If Venturo is offering $250k for 25% of the company, then the valuation that they are agreeing on is a value of $1m for the company after the new investment is made.  If Jack is the sole owner of one million shares before the new investment, then BigCo sells 333,333 shares to Venturo for $250k.  The new total number of shares of BigCo is 1,333,333; Venturo holds 25%, and Jack holds 75%. The amount that Jack originally invested in the company is irrelevant.  At the moment of the sale, the Venturo and Jack agree that Jack's stake is worth $750k.  The value of Jack's stake may have gone up, but he owes no capital gains tax, because he hasn't realized any of his gains yet.  Jack hasn't sold any of his stake.  You might think that he has, because he used to hold 100% and now he holds 75%.  However, the difference is that the company is worth more than was before the sale.  So the value of his stake was unchanged immediately before and after the sale. Jack agrees to this because the company needs this additional capital in order to meet its potential. (See ""Why is stock dilution legal?"") For further explanation and another example of this, see the question ""If a startup receives investment money, does the startup founder/owner actually gain anything?"" Your other scenario, where Venturo purchases existing shares directly from Jack, is not practical in this situation.  If Jack sells his existing shares, you are correct that the company does not gain any additional capital.  An investor would not want to invest in the company this way, because the company is struggling and needs new capital." I believe, I could be wrong, it has been a long day. By exercising this right you have the right to purchase the equivalent of their current share.  Eg. Someone owns 50 of 100 shares. and the company does a rights offering and is expanding the shares to 200. That person has first right to purchase 50 more shares to keep his share from being diluted. "This is an old question, but a new product has popped up that provides an alternative answer. There is a website called stockpile.com that allows you to purchase ""stock gift certificates"" for others.  These come in both electronic and traditional physical form.  This meets my question's original criteria of a gift giver paying for stock without having any of the recipient's personal information and thus maintaining the gift's surprise. I should note a few things about this service: Despite these limitations I wanted to post it here so others were aware of it as an option.  If no other alternative will work and this is what it takes to get a parent interested in teaching their child to invest, then it's well worth the costs." Your son can gift you unlimited amount of money. It does not fall under income tax. It falls under gift tax. As per gift tax there is no tax for you. Any interest you earn on this is taxable to you. Your son transferred into savings account... if your son is NRI he can't hold savings account. Ask him to open a NRE account and convert savings account to NRO account. "Yes, this is possible with some companies. When you buy shares of stock through a stock broker, the shares are kept in ""street name.""  That means that the shares are registered to the broker, not to you.  That makes it easy to sell the stock later.  The stock broker keeps track of who actually owns which shares.  The system works well, and there are legal protections in place to protect the investors' assets. You can request that your broker change the stock to your name and request a certificate from the company.  However, companies are no longer required to do this, and some won't.  Your broker will charge you a fee for this service. Alternatively, if you really only want one share for decoration, there are companies that specialize in selling shares of stock with certificates.  Two of them are giveashare.com and uniquestockgift.com, which offer one real share of stock with a stock certificate in certain popular companies.  (Note: I have no experience with either one.)  Some companies no longer issue new stock certificates; for those, these services sell you a replica stock certificate along with a real share of electronic stock.  (This is now the case for Disney and Apple.) With your stock certificate, you are an actual official stockholder, entitled to dividends and a vote at the shareholder meeting. If this is strictly an investment for you, consider the advantages of street name shares: As to your question on buying stock directly from a company and bypassing a broker altogether, see Can I buy stocks directly from a public company?" Energy Transfer Partners, LP (stock symbol ETP) is the parent company of Dakota Access LLC, the developer of the Dakota Access Pipeline.  Since ETP is a publicly traded company, it is certainly possible to purchase the stock. To answer your questions: Would it not be possible to buy their stocks, bring down the price of the stocks and keep it there until investors pull out because it is financially unwise to these investors? You cannot artificially bring the price of a stock down by buying the stock.  Purchasing large enough amounts would theoretically cause the price to go up, not down. You could theoretically cause the stock to go down by shorting the stock (borrowing shares and then selling them), but it would take a lot of shares to do this, and may not be successful.  If not successful, your losses are potentially unlimited. Would it alternatively be possible to buy enough stock to have a voice in the operations of the company? Yes, you could theoretically purchase enough of the stock to control the company.  The market capitalization of ETP is currently $17.9 Billion; if you owned half of the stock, you would have complete control of the company.  But buying that much stock would certainly influence the price of the stock, so it would cost you more than half of that amount to buy that much stock. You could get yourself a voice at the table for less without owning a full half of the stock, but you would not have full control, and would need support from others to get the outcome you want. Alternatively, someone determined to exert their influence could theoretically make an offer to purchase the Dakota Access subsidiary from ETP, which might be less costly than purchasing half of the entire corporation. Even if an extremely wealthy person were to try one of these options and destroy this company, it wouldn't necessarily stop another company from building something similar.  The investors you purchased the company from would have billions of dollars to do so with. If the company is non-public, your hands are tied. Most startups have a Stock Option Plan with specific rules on the shares. In almost all cases, they have a Transferability clause preventing transfers of options and shares unless approved by the company (who would almost always say no). Additionally, they usually have a Right of First Refusal (ROFR), which states that if shares are going to be transferred, the company gets the chance to buy it first. In your case, the company may argue your friend would sell you the shares for free and the company would exercise their ROFR and buy back the shares for free. There is not much you can do in this case. You may be able to write up a contract between your friend and you, but it would be costly and possibly not worth the effort. You may be better off asking for a lump sum or some other sort of compensation. Additionally, your friend might want to be careful with this idea. You could potentially gain access to sensitive company tools/documents which could get them in a lot of trouble. "You uncle is liable to pay ""Capital-Gains"" tax. Essentially the sale price less of cost would be treated as gains. The gains are taxed at 10% without indexation and 20% with Indexation.  The capital gains tax can be avoided if your uncle invests the gains into specified ""Infrastructure bonds"" or buys another property within a period of 3 years. The funds need to be kept in a separate ""Capital Gains"" account and not a regular savings account till you buy another property within 3 years." I think  the cleanest way to do this is to rent the house from your father for 2 years, possibly adding an option to buy at a set price to the lease agreement.  That takes care of any gift issues, and avoids complications like you living in a house that you couldn't afford to own otherwise.  If/when you are able to afford a mortgage, get a mortgage on the house and buy it from your father.   Will a bank be willing to take out a mortgage on a house that I technically own for the full amount? I would not take out a mortgage for anything more than 80% of the house's market value.  Anything more than that, and you need to pay mortgage insurance, which will increase your monthly payment for no benefit to you.   My biggest concern is that you won't be able to afford an 80% mortgage after 2 years.  If your father really wants to keep the house in the family then he should either keep the house and rent it to you, or give you the down payment as a gift (keeping under the maximum gift to avoid taxes). If neither you or your father cannot afford the house you may have no choice but to sell it.  I would not advise you make a bad financial decision purely for sentimental reasons. You would still be the legal owner of the shares, so you would almost certainly need to transfer them to a broker than supports the Hong Kong Stock Exchange (which allows you to trade on the Shanghai exchange). In order to delist they would need to go through a process which would include enabling shareholders to continue to access their holdings. "Companies normally do not give you X% of shares, but in effect give you a fixed ""N"" number of shares. The ""N"" may translate initially to X%, but this can go down. If say we began with 100 shares, A holding 50 shares and B holding 50 shares. As the startup grows, there is need for more money. Create 50 more shares and sell it at an arranged price to investor C. Now the percentage of each investor is 33.33%. The money that comes in will go to the company and not to A & B.   From here on, A & C together can decide to slowly cut out B by, for example: After any of the above the % of shares held by B would definitely go down."