A report entitled “Annual Economic Survey of Employee Share Ownership in European Countries 2022” published by the European Federation of Employee Share Ownership (EFES) points to a decline in employee share ownership across Europe, except in the UK. EFES produces a version of this report annually. It contains a lot of data on the pattern…

April 25, 2023 Read more >

You have probably heard of the term ‘shareholder activism’. This refers to actions taken by shareholders of a company to influence the management or direction of the company. Shareholder activism can take different forms and has advantages and disadvantages. We will look at some of these in this article. Shareholders may engage directly with the…

April 21, 2023 Read more >

An annual return needs to be submitted by all companies which have an active employee share plan registered with HMRC. This includes tax-advantaged share plans such as EMI, CSOP, SAYE and SIP as well as any non-tax advantaged plans or arrangements such as unapproved options, conditional share awards (or restricted stock units), growth share plans…

April 19, 2023 Read more >

In the Spring budget 2023, the following reform to the CSOP rules and changes to the EMI rules, effective from 6 April 2023, have been announced: Reform of CSOP The CSOP rules will be reformed, as previously announced by the government on 23 September 2022, in the following manner: paragraph 6(1) of the CSOP legislation…

March 16, 2023 Read more >

For many businesses, 2023 will be the year that their current LTIP performance periods will come to an end, for others this may be the point where the LTIP looks as though it is unlikely to deliver any return at all.  For those tasked with reviewing and establishing the value (in all senses) of such…

March 15, 2023 Read more >

On 19th January 2023, HMRC published the Employment Related Securities Bulletin 47. The main contents of the Bulletin are: Changes to the ERS year-end return template Changes to the CSOP limit and share class restrictions Update of the ERS guidance Changes to the ERS year-end return template HMRC has announced that they will be making…

February 24, 2023 Read more >

Companies with Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) have typically been overlooked by Private Equity firms due to their perceived 100% employee-owned structure. However, in recent years, companies have been using more partial ESOPs. Could this be the turn of the tide for PE firms to consider these companies alongside the benefits that an ESOP provides?…

February 24, 2023 Read more >

In November 2022, the Financial Reporting Council (“FRC”) published its annual review of Corporate Governance Code (“the Code”) disclosures.  As previously, it selected a range of 100 companies across the FTSE 350 and Small Cap markets. Whilst much of the findings will only be interesting to fully listed businesses, there are still some important points…

January 26, 2023 Read more >

Listed companies are required to put their directors’ remuneration policy to a shareholder resolution at least every three years. If a company wishes to make any changes to its remuneration policy, it must put the new policy to shareholders for approval at an annual general meeting (AGM). Several listed companies are likely to be seeking…

January 26, 2023 Read more >

On 22 December 2022, HMRC published its tax avoidance bulletin Spotlight 61 – ‘Disguised remuneration: remuneration trusts used to reduce profits and disguise income’ which follows the warning given by HMRC in Spotlight 51 and Spotlight 56 about remuneration trust tax avoidance schemes and explained why these do not work. HMRC have noticed that certain…

January 26, 2023 Read more >

Looking back on a year of turmoil 2022 was supposed to be the year in which we started to get back to normal, or to embrace the “new” normal. In January, COVID was a declining force, inflation was 5.5%, investors anticipated a brighter outlook for the UK economy and the FTSE100 index closed above 7,500…

December 21, 2022 Read more >

On 8th November this year, a (cross party supported) Private Members’ Bill was introduced into Parliament with the aim of updating two of the current share ownership schemes (the share incentive plan, known as SIP, and the save-as-you-earn system, known as SAYE or Sharesave) —and proposes a third scheme. As is the nature of these…

November 22, 2022 Read more >