The Issuer’s Guide to Cashless Participation
Cashless Participation 101 Maybe you’ve seen Cashless Participation mentioned in a LinkedIn post, perhaps you’ve seen it show up on an industry conference agenda, or maybe you’re offering it at your company. Regardless of where you may have noticed it, Cashless Participation is working its way into the fabric of Employee Stock Purchase Plans (ESPPs)…
The Benefits of Optimizing Your ESPP
By increasing employee engagement, ESPPs boost overall corporate performance. ESPPs are broad-based programs that provide companies with a cost-effective way to extend ownership opportunities to their employees. While that sounds great on paper, the real benefits of ESPPs only come when they are correctly optimized and tailored to your company’s specific situation. If your ESPP…
What is an ESPP?
What is an ESPP, how does it work, and what benefits can it provide to employees? What is an ESPP? An Employee Stock Purchase Plan (“ESPP”) is an employee benefit plan that allows employees to purchase company stock through payroll deductions, with the benefit of a discount or company match to encourage participation. These broad-based…
Counting the Costs and Balancing the Benefits
Financial Engineering for ESPPs. Fidelity Investments and Infinite Equity teamed up to explore how ESPP elements fit together to help companies engineer a plan to manage financial implications and deliver balanced benefits.
“Cadillac” ESPP Considerations: What You Need to Know Before Adopting
Balance this exceptional employee benefit with compliance and administrative ease. Introduction Employee Stock Purchase Plans (ESPPs) are common among public companies, and it is easy to see why. On the participant side, ESPPs allow a large population of employees to build wealth through the purchase of company stock, typically at a discount to the market…
The Case for an ESPP at IPO
A unique opportunity to ensure an ongoing ownership culture. 2021 has been a banner year for IPOs, and particularly for companies going public via a special-purpose acquisition company (“SPAC”). Expectations were high coming into the year, as companies prolonged the decision to go public during the pandemic, but have dramatically bounced back. This, coupled with…
The Forgotten Participant: Nonqualified ESPPs for Your Essential Workers
Background and Current Market Environment The COVID-19 pandemic has placed compensation and benefits front and center, particularly for front-line employees (“essential workers”) like grocery store, warehouse, and food-service workers who do not have the luxury to work from home. These employees do not necessarily have adequate safety gear, access to health care or paid family…
Private Company ESPPs: Thinking Outside the Public Company Box
ESPPs for small- to mid-sized private companies. Employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs) have traditionally been a vehicle for public companies, and are often rolled out upon an initial public offering to rally human capital. For private companies, securities law constraints and the illiquidity of the stock were often considered challenges that outweighed the benefits of…
Auto-Cancel Options
Options that cancel automatically upon a pre-determined price drop can save companies from the challenges of deeply underwater options.
TSR Calculation: Accumulated Dividends
Infinite Equity laid out the preferred method for calculating Total Shareholder Return (TSR) here. However, the calculation of TSR ultimately must follow the definition outlined in the legal grant agreement. Some companies do not assume that dividends are reinvested in the underlying entity when they are issued; instead, the dividends are essentially treated as a…
