[This message was posted by Ryan Pierce (FPL Technical Director) of FIX 
Protocol Ltd. <[email protected]> to the "General Q/A" discussion 
forum at http://fixprotocol.org/discuss/22. You can reply to it on-line at 
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Hello, John. I've moved your post from FIXML Schema to General Q/A because this 
question goes well beyond FIXML in scope.

> Has anyone, using the FIX4.2 version, any idea how corporate action
> notices can be processed? Simple corporate actions (TAG378) look pretty
> straight forward, but the free-form nature of Dividend Notices and
> offerings carry more information that FIX4.2 can account for. The CMS
> system that FIX is replacing was more conducive to this type of
> messaging. Any suggestions?

FIX, at least as it exists today, isn't intended to address the full scope of 
corporate action processing.

FIX has always supported GTC orders. Certain corporate actions can result in 
modification of open GTC orders. Stock splits or reverse splits change open 
quantities and prices, dividends may change limit prices, etc. Prior to FIX 
4.2, this information could not be communicated between parties. A 100 share 
order might turn into a 300 share order due to a 3:1 split; the party who sent 
the order may be expecting 100 shares and could be filled for 300, which could 
cause unexpected behavior.

FIX 4.2 introduced the concept of "Restatement" whereby the party who received 
the order indicates that it has changed certain parameters of the order itself. 
In the example above, that party may send an Execution Report with 
ExecType=Restated and ExecRestatementReason=0 (Corporate Action) with 
OrderQty=300 and Price=1/3 of the original limit price. The intent of this is 
to allow both parties to the FIX session to reconcile the state of their open 
orders. It is *NOT* intended as a means of fully describing a corporate action.

FIX 4.2 also introduced tag 292 (CorporateAction) which is used in the Market 
Data, Security Definition, Security List, and Security Status suites of 
messages. This can identify types of corporate actions performed, but does not 
contain detailed information about them. So no, I don't believe FIX currently 
addresses this functionality.

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