Share Plan Trusts

Share Plan Trusts or Employee Benefit Trusts can be an advantageous way to attract and retain employees, particularly if you are facing liquidity issues. They also facilitate purchasing shares back from departing employees and can facilitate acting as an internal market for any share sale windows the company may wish to offer employees

Using an independent and professional trustee enhances the delivery and governance of your share plan, and we have a deep history of providing such services to accommodate individual company share plan needs.

We can provide this service offshore and onshore as required and can leverage our vast international network to facilitate multi-jurisdictional Share Plan Trusts.

We help listed companies to service their share plans using an Employee Share Ownership Trust by acting as a share warehouse or ‘share store’ where companies are unable to use newly issued or treasury shares to satisfy their share plans, such as for any executive long-term incentive plan arrangements or where share liquidity is an issue.

Typically, companies will fund the Employee Share Ownership Trust through a loan and the trustee will make market purchases of shares, but we can also facilitate receiving newly issued shares. Additionally, we can assist with recycling or buying shares that may be sold in the market at a share release event.

We will work with you and any appointed share plan administrator to deliver the shares the Employee Share Ownership Trust holds to satisfy company share plans on vesting or exercise events.

We have established relationships with a variety of company share plan service providers, including share plan administrators, brokers, custodians and registrars, to deliver a truly independent and professional Share Plan Trust / Employee Benefit Trust service.

We work with private companies to provide a share warehouse service, often alongside a nominee service, whereby we act as legal owner on behalf of underlying employee beneficial owners.

We help private companies simplify their shareholder register using our Nominee Service, acting as a single professional shareholder for employees, which also assists with maintaining confidentiality between employee allocations where this may be publicly available on a general register.