Stock symbols get a Q behind the name and are traded at extremely low levels. Are new stocks issued when the company emerges from Chapter 11, or are these same ones being traded and renamed back again?
The "Q" at the end of a ticker indicates the company is in bankruptcy proceedings.
http://www.bargaineering.com/articles/reading-nasdaq-ticker-symbols.html
In most cases, the stock gets cancelled when the company emerges from bankruptcy. In most of those cases, the shareholders get nothing.
Effectively what happens is that company creditors exchange their debt for an equity position in the reorganized company. Usually, there are not enough assets in the company to return equity to the shareholders.
It is unusual for shareholders to retain some ownership, but it does happen. For example, when Mirant emerged from bankruptcy, existing shareholders received about 3-4% of the reorganized (down, of course, from the 100% it owned of the bankrupt company).
Disposition of the existing shares is always covered in the plans of reorganization filed with the bankruptcy court.
