[stock-throwaway]

I did talk to a lawyer, maybe he wasn't a good one, but my experience is that lawyers tend to be so risk-averse. He basically said "yeah, you can't sell them".

On the other side, these hedge fund people say their lawyers are getting all clever and stuff, but the contract says that even if the company decides to nullify the shares involved in the agreement, I still need to pay them the equivalent dollar value which basically means they're just looking out for themselves...

[toomuchtodo]

Not legal or investing advice. If you can find a counterparty willing to perform a forward contract with a non recourse instrument (you owe them nothing if the shares turn out to be worthless), that might be a transaction worth investigating, depending on how much of a discount you’re willing to take due to unmarketability of the securities and your time horizon (liquidity now vs liquidity later).

In current state, the securities are worthless (due to possible transfer restrictions). Your objective is to figure out how to make them worth something to someone.