Empower your business by empowering your employees

Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP)

Employee Share Ownership Plans (ESOPs) can address BEE Ownership, while aligning employees with the business owner’s interests. A well structured and executed ESOP can improve business performance by correctly incentivising staff and can also strengthen labour relations.

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Broadening empowerment

ESOPs empower the people in your business

Use BEE Ownership to attract, retain and reward employees as partners in your business

Successful business presentation of a man at the office

Our experience helps you succeed

We have extensive experience in structuring and implementing ESOP transactions for multinational companies and SA corporates. We have advised on more than 150 transactions since 2005
An in-depth understanding of the BEE environment, knowledge of BEE structures and their complexities, and our proven corporate finance expertise allows us to combine best practice with innovative thinking

Feasibility of an ESOP

We help you understand if an ESOP will work for your company by evaluating:

Your employee demographics - for BEE points.
Your employee numbers - to ensure value flows to employees.
Your financial projections - to ensure sustainability.
Your culture - to establish if an ESOP is right for you.

Managing Employee Share Ownership risks

ESOPs can be daunting and can pose risks to companies. We help you understand the risks and set out risk mitigation strategies through:

Modelling of various financial scenarios and providing solutions.
Solid alignment and setting expectations upfront.
Robust legal documentation.
Employee engagement.

Turnkey implementation

We design the scheme.
We structure the scheme.
We present the scheme to your employees and assist with union negotiations.
We draft robust legal documents that protect your rights.
We help roll out and communicate the scheme in the relevant official languages.
We assist with dealing with your BEE verification agency.
We assist with liaising with the BEE Commission.

Understanding how value is created for employees

In designing a successful ESOP, there should be transparency as to how employees participate in the economic benefits based on the performance of the company. This requires:

Understanding the liquidity mechanisms.
Having clear good and bad leaver provisions.
Apportioning dividends and capital gains systematically.
Bench-marking against other schemes across relevant industries.

Ensuring you maximise your BEE Ownership

We structure the transaction to maximise the current and long-term BEE ownership credit.
We work with your BEE verification agency to ensure you get the BEE points you expect.
We assist you with the BEE Commission registration process.
We partner with you each year thereafter to ensure the points endure.

Help communicate your ESOP

We help with:

Programme conceptualisation and theming.
Agreement of key messaging and alignment with company values.
Design and development of communication material for fiduciaries and participants.
Facilitation of ESOP fiduciary training sessions.
Facilitation of participant training sessions.
Reporting on training sessions.

What are you looking for?

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ESOP Consultation

Please contact us to set up a call to discuss how we can help you think through implementing an ESOP

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OUR CLIENTS

Clients We Have Assisted

We have worked with a variety of top clients and companies, have a look at our clients and how we help small, medium and large multinational businesses with transformation, black ownership and improving their BEE scorecard.