Tips, News and Insights from the Nº1 Equity Management Platform in Europe

At Capdesk, we continually work to accommodate your own particular needs. This is why we've updated Capdesk's access settings to make them more customisable, giving you full control over what kind of access each user in your company has to the platform. Let's take a closer look.

If you run a growing, dynamic company you may be considering an initial public offering (more commonly known as an “IPO” or a “listing”) for your company i.e. floating your company on the stock market.

This is the first of a three part series about IPOs. The first summarises the advantages and disadvantages of doing an IPO. The second outlines which of the several UK markets you could consider. The third is perhaps the most important as it gives some guidance about what you should be aware of before you start.

If you have an EMI scheme you're obliged to file an Annual Return to HMRC once a year, detailing all actions relating to your grant which took place over the last 12 months (eg. exercised grants, cancellations, taxation, replacement after an acquisition a.o.). If no actions took place, you still have to file this to HMRC through a Nil Report instead.

Every time your company issues a new grant as part of your EMI scheme, you need to notify HMRC through an EMI notification. If you’ve used Capdesk before, you probably know by now that the platform can generate and automatically fill out an EMI notification for you. If not, take a brief look at our blogpost on that and come right back!

Whether you’ve had an EMI scheme for a while, or just started setting one up, making EMI notifications for HMRC is always one of those tasks that take up more time than you’d like. This process requires you to either manually enter all of the grant recipient’s and issued shares’ details on the HMRC website, or to upload a spreadsheet of your own where you’ve been keeping track of this information.

“Lawyers will tell you it’s about incentivisation, accountants will tell you it’s about making sure people stay as long as possible, but for me it’s actually about giving back to the team who are giving us precious years of their lives.”

If you’ve set up an employee share plan or are considering doing so, you’ve probably read plenty about the topic, including several contributing articles in Forbes. One of those in particular, argues categorically against offering equity to employees. However, we think its author only tells half the truth about employee equity.

A shareholder register is a common requirement for private companies in numerous countries, including but not limited to the UK, the US, and Denmark. Countries such as Sweden, Australia, and Finland keep an equivalent share register. The register consisting of a list of the company's shareholders, which was historically kept in a loose-leaf or bound book. Even today though, newly formed companies continue to use and manually update a hard-copy, despite the electronic version often being easier to maintain and just as acceptable from a legal perspective.

Nokia is one of the many organisations who believe in the potential of employee share plans. We caught up with Lisa West, Program Manager Long Term Incentives at Nokia, to talk advantages and pitfalls of ESPPs, how she sees the future of employee ownership, and 'Share in Success' - the employee share plan that won Nokia an ESOP Centre award for 'Best All-Employee International Share Plan' in 2017.

Allotting new shares is a common way for a company to increase its share capital, providing funds for expansions or advancements of the business.