I advise on the full range of equity incentive arrangements for both listed and private companies. This includes all HMRC approved share plans and Enterprise Management Incentives together with a wide variety of unapproved arrangements tailored to support individual clients' business objectives. These include nil-paid shares, hurdle shares, joint share ownership plans, performance share plans and long-term incentive plans as well as conventional unapproved option plans. We can also be quite imaginative in establishing special share classes for a variety of reasons such as to ring-fence a particular value for the founders or reflect the economic contribution of a particular part of a business.

I regularly work with the rest of the corporate team on transactions, ensuring that the tax implications of incentive plans are clear, that any tax and national insurance contributions will be properly accounted for and that the deal is structured in such a way as to preserve any available corporation tax deduction.