Finance History|11 Wall Street — Wild Irish Rose Leaves Nasdaq for CDB

People treat Constellation Brands as a Rochester beer-and-wine house that always printed STZ on the New York tape.

The 1999 issuer was still Canandaigua Brands, Inc., a Finger Lakes dessert-wine company that had outgrown its first market.

Marvin Sands founded Canandaigua Industries in 1945. The firm incorporated as Canandaigua Wine Company in 1972 and went public on Nasdaq in 1973. Company filings later said no cash dividend has been paid since that offering.

A 24 September 1999 release said the Class A and Class B common, then quoted as CBRNA and CBRNB, had applied to move to the New York Stock Exchange.

On 12 October 1999 the company announced that both classes had commenced trading on that Exchange as CDB and CDB.B.

A March 2001 prospectus restated the same dates and symbols. After the 19 September 2000 name change to Constellation Brands, Inc., the Class A line printed as STZ.

The mechanism is an exchange migration, not a cash offering. The dual-class book already existed. The New York tape took the listing that Nasdaq had carried since 1973.

Holders in 1999 bought popular-priced wine, imported beer, and spirits, not a later Mexican beer license book alone.

The pin is the Broad Street facade of the Exchange, where CDB became STZ. Interior trading is not visitable from the sidewalk.

Photo: Arild Vagen, August 2017, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons. New York Stock Exchange from Broad Street.