Members of the Employee Ownership Association recently attended an inspiring talk by Naomi Climer CBE, Co-Chair of the Institute for the Future of Work (IFoW) at the annual Robert Oakeshott lecture, hosted by Cass Business School.Naomi’s lecture looked at the impact of automation and AI...
We're often contacted by private company owners who are keen to implement employee share plans for their employees quickly. They've heard about the positives – employee commitment, improvement in productivity – and for some plans like the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) and Share Incentive Plan...
What is an Employee Share Plan Return?All employee share schemes need to be registered with HMRC. An employee share plan return is the annual process of notifying HMRC of awards granted, lapsed & exercised and confirming if any alterations have been made to key feature...
If you run a private company, or your company isn’t listed on the main market, you are probably blissfully happy that you don’t have to “comply or explain” in accordance with the UK Corporate Governance Code. The latest version produced by the Financial Reporting Council...
From time to time, we get requests from companies who’ve established, or started to establish, a share plan for employees, only to get stuck on the nitty gritty of making the awards, or managing the scheme afterwards. Employee share plans can range in complexity but whatever...
Last year we made some predictions about share plans which, looking back, were on the whole pretty accurate. The number of Employee Ownership transactions in 2019 more than doubled from the 2018 level and is increasingly becoming a “must-consider” option for owner managers looking for...
The year in review: Another great year for employee ownership as Employee Ownership Trusts started moving into the mainstream. For RM2, our biggest news was that we joined the increasing number of companies that are owned by their employees! January: January is trusts and estates tax returns...
If the Labour Party wins the election, their manifesto has promised the removal of entrepreneurs’ relief (ER), which provides a 10% capital gains tax (CGT) rate on the sale of shares in certain circumstances. (It’s probably worth nothing that the Treasury is already grumbling...
Despite the unfortunate connotations with the “John Major” political era, as Parliament has been dissolved, we felt it was a good time to go “back to basics”, and explore the fundamental benefits, potential pitfalls, and overall reasoning behind establishing an employee share scheme.What is an...
When you’re setting up a share scheme for employees, one of the first questions you’ll want to ask is whether you should offer direct shares or share options. What are the key differences between shares and options? A quick summary is set out below: A Share gives...
Fast growing entrepreneurial business that implement Enterprise Management Incentive (“EMI”) share options are very frequently the same businesses looking for external funding from venture capitalists (“VC”), or seeking investment from individuals under the tax-advantaged Enterprise Investment Scheme (“EIS”). But how do these work together? Here are...
In certain circumstances, making changes to an existing Enterprise Management Incentive option can culminate in the removal of all the tax benefits usually attaching to EMI. An EMI option is granted by way of an option agreement – so it forms a contract between the...
Companies that wish to grant Enterprise Management Incentive (“EMI”) share options need to meet various tests to qualify for the tax advantages – for example, companies need have fewer than 250 full time equivalent employees and gross assets of less than £30m.Companies also need to...
Background RM2 is an employee owned consultancy specialising in the design, implementation and administration of all types of employee share plan arrangements. Our clients include private companies and those listed on AIM or similar markets. Form more information please visit our website at www.rm2.co.uk. We...
When we begin to speak with clients about employee share plans, one of the questions we are consistently asked is, “what size should the award be”? This is, of course, an extremely important question, but unfortunately not one which is necessarily very simple to answer. There are...
