Esop Sofa: Hot Topics In Employee Share Ownership

Find out more on our website: https://bit.ly/3Jtvqtr Background: In our next newspad review webinar, Global Shares’ Darren Smith will chair a panel of share schemes experts for in depth discussion of their pick of articles featured in recent editions of “It’s Our Business”, newspad of the Esop Centre. Panellists will include Julie Shepherd, Director of Share Plans at The Sage Group plc, Arran Simpson, Partner – Global Employer Services, Deloitte and Sonia Gilbert, Partner at Clifford Chance. Featured items include: the threat to share schemes from private equity take overs; warning signs among the latest HMRC stats; and the Centre’s response to the Chancellor’s call for evidence on EMI plans, along with newspad's regular items: companies, ESG, and global employee equity updates. Panellists: Julie Shepherd has worked in the share plans sector for over 20 years in both provider and issuer roles. Having worked previously for the Abbey National building society, and then Computershare as an Account Manager responsible for both existing client relationships and business development opportunities, Julie moved to her first issuer role as an interim in the share plan team at Kingfisher in 2014. In 2016, she joined The Sage Group plc, where she is now Director – Share Plans, responsible for the management of all the company’s equity plans including a Global Employee Share plan in 17 countries supported by a team of two share plan specialists. Arran Simpson is a partner in Deloitte’s reward practice, advising companies on all aspects of reward from overall reward strategy, through executive pay, long term incentives and all employee incentive arrangements. He has a particular focus on working with management teams to implement equity based incentive arrangements, covering design, tax, legal and accounting aspects. Arran works with a wide range of companies that include a large number of high growth technology businesses, supporting them from the early phases of the business through investment rounds and to eventual exit, dealing with the challenges that arise as businesses experience rapid growth and change. Sonia Gilbert, partner at Clifford Chance, specialises in advising companies on remuneration issues, incentive arrangements and employment tax matters. She has particular expertise in remuneration regulation and governance and the design and operation of incentive arrangements. She also advises on global incentive plans, alternative remuneration structures including employee trusts and share plan hedging. Sonia sits on the executive committees for the Employee Share Ownership Centre and the Share Plan Lawyers’ organisation. She also chairs the Financial Services Group of ifs ProShare, an industry body supporting employee share ownership. She is a leading individual in Chambers and is ranked by Legal500 2021 in the “Hall of Fame” for Employee Share Schemes.