A bequest of $2,658,308 in Ben E. Keith stock was received by the American Numismatic Association in late April reports executive director Larry Shepherd.
The shares are nonvoting and the ANA cannot sell them except to the Ben E. Keith Company, which is a food and Anheuser-Busch distributor in 60 Texas counties that employs over 3,000 people.
The company, if it chooses to buy back the stock, can pay a price not to exceed 85 percent of the book value, which works out to $2,259,562, Shepherd said.
This increases the amount of Keith stock owned by the ANA to just over $7 million, with the potential for another $7 million in shares to be received as heirs to Kenneth Keith die in the course of the next 40 years. Shepherd said there were six or seven heirs left.
Considering the ANA?s ongoing budget deficit, which is running at a rate of about $1.5 million in the current fiscal year, is a sale of the stock possible?
Shepherd said it was something to investigate from time to time, but ?no plans are imminent right now.?
Currently, he said the ANA has $4.5 million in more liquid assets in the endowment.
