A description of the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives service.
To find out more or register for a free trial click here or call the PLC Helpline on +44 (0)20 7202 1220.
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives is a cost-effective resource for professionals who need accurate and concise know-how on the latest developments in incentives law. Subscribers to this specialist on-line service have access to:
A bank of material on share schemes and other employee and executive incentives. The information is continuously updated to reflect the latest changes in law and practice.
Regular updates on key developments in law and practice relating to employee share plans, as well as their practical implications.
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives does not deluge subscribers with irrelevant information. The content is:
Meticulously researched;
Clearly presented;
Up-to-date;
Filtered, covering only important developments.
The range of resources and materials is explained in more detail below. See What resources and materials does it provide?
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives can be the invisible knowledge foundation of a law firm. The service is designed to help practitioners by:
Enhancing their capacity to do fee-earning or client-related work by reducing time spent gathering information.
Improving the quality, speed and accuracy of their service to clients.
Bringing practitioners (senior, junior or trainees) up to speed quickly and effectively.
Allowing them to concentrate more on using know-how for marketing purposes and making the practice more competitive.
Reducing their risk of errors by providing reliable resources.
Improving know-how in areas where practitioners have less practical experience.
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives gives lawyers and other professionals a level of support that was previously available only to professional firms with dedicated PSLs. Firms with PSLs use the service to free their time from routine information-gathering, allowing them to focus on developing firm and client-specific know-how, such as:
Drafting precedent documents focused on specific clients.
Producing tailored client know-how materials.
Identifying and capturing know-how generated by fee earners through transactions and integrating that with the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives materials.
Delivering training programmes.
Providing support for transactions through research and analysis of specific areas of law.
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives has law firms small and large, including the Magic Circle firms, and many specialist incentives practitioners among its subscribers. The service is aimed at:
Lawyers, be they:
Specialist incentives lawyers or employment, corporate, finance and other lawyers who need to know about incentives; or
In-house, in private practice or at the Bar.
Incentives practitioners who need to understand and stay up-to-date with incentives law and practice, such as:
Accountants;
Compensation and remuneration consultants;
In-house HR, legal, finance, payroll and company secretarial staff dealing with reward and incentives issues; and
Members of remuneration committees.
The service is designed and run by a team of specialist incentives editors with a wide range of practical experience in both private legal practice and specialist consultancies. For more information on the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives team, see PLC Share Schemes & Incentives Professional support team (www.practicallaw.com/8-205-8957).
The team forms part of, and is supported by, a wider PLC team, consisting of over 90 former practitioners with experience in corporate, property, finance, tax, banking, insolvency, intellectual property, copyright, competition, employment, environment and pensions law, as well as litigation and alternative forms of dispute resolution. For details of the members of the full PLC team, see PLC Professional support team (www.practicallaw.com/4-103-0546).
The materials written by the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives team are supplemented by materials written by experts from leading law firms and incentives consultancies. These materials are then kept up-to-date by the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives team.
The PLC Share Schemes & Incentives team is supported by a consultation board, consisting of leading incentives practitioners.
Their input helps maintain high standards of accuracy on points of law and practice and enables the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives team to stay up-to-date with current market practice. For details of the members of the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives consultation board, see PLC Share Schemes & Incentives consultation board (www.practicallaw.com/2-205-8955).
The service covers the following incentives topics:
Scheme design and financial considerations.
Regulatory, corporate governance, company and securities law issues.
Tax-favoured share-based incentives.
Fully-taxable share-based incentives.
Cash-based incentives.
Employee benefit trusts.
Income tax, National insurance contributions, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, corporation tax and stamp duty issues relevant to share plans.
Employment law issues relevant to share plans.
International share plans developments.
Share plans issues that can arise on corporate transactions.
Market practice developments, including remuneration surveys and new and unusual types of incentives structures.
Private equity executives' participation in investee companies (called "carried interest" arrangements)..
The service also contains materials on cross-border incentives issues. Pensions, planning for high net worth individuals and wider employment taxes and employment benefits are covered by PLC Pensions, PLC Private Client and PLC Tax respectively, but those materials are linked to PLC Share Schemes & Incentives materials where appropriate.
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives provides the following resources and materials:
These are explained below.
Practice notes are concise and practical explanations of core aspects of incentives law. They are an up-to-date, reliable statement of law and practice for practitioners of all levels of experience.
Practice notes are updated by the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives team whenever necessary to reflect relevant developments and include links to source materials and other helpful information.
For a list of all practice notes, see PLC Share Schemes & Incentives Practice notes (www.practicallaw.com/3-205-8993).
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives provides an online library of standard documents and standard clauses for use in incentives plan rules, agreements and other documents. These are usually accompanied by drafting notes, which give detailed guidance on the relevant legal and drafting issues.
Standard documents, clauses and drafting notes are kept up-to-date by the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives team to reflect relevant developments and changes in practice.
Standard documents and clauses are available both on-line and in Microsoft Word format (see How do I use the PLC Word template? (www.practicallaw.com/0-101-3271)) For details on converting PLC standard documents into your firm's own house style, see PLC FirmStyle.
For a full list of all standard documents, clauses and drafting notes currently available on the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives service, see PLC Share Schemes & Incentives Standard documents and drafting notes (www.practicallaw.com/1-205-8994).
Checklists are user-friendly and practical step-by-step guides to incentives issues that arise in the context of commercial transactions.
Checklists are updated to reflect significant developments and changes in practice.
For a full list of all checklists, see PLC Share Schemes & Incentives checklists and flowcharts (www.practicallaw.com/5-205-8992).
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives includes access to incentives-related articles published in the PLC Magazine and PLC Cross-border Quarterly (www.practicallaw.com/3-103-2126).
Using the Ask the team feature, the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives professional support team provides guidance on questions of practical or topical interest, highlighting related content on PLC Share Schemes & Incentives. Rather than shying away from complex areas of incentives law, the Ask the team feature aims to tackle some of the most troublesome questions and present answers with clarity and precision. The Ask the team feature is circulated in the weekly e-mail and published Ask the teams appear in the "Legal updates" tab for each incentives topic. For a full list of previously published Ask the team items, sorted by topic, see PLC Share Schemes & Incentives Ask the team archive (www.practicallaw.com/3-301-2980).
Questions can be submitted by e-mail at incentivesfeedback@practicallaw.com.
Our normal Terms of use (www.practicallaw.com/1-203-1075) apply.
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives provides access to:
The PLC Cross-border Employee Share Plans Handbook which consists of concise and practical summaries of incentives law in a number of jurisdictions around the world; and
PLC Which lawyer?, which identifies leading lawyers and law firms in different jurisdictions around the world.
The PLC Cross-border Employee Share Plans Handbook and PLC Which Lawyer? are produced by the PLC Cross-border service and are updated on a regular basis. For further information on this service, see PLC Cross-border.
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives updates cover:
New UK and EU cases relevant to incentives practice (mainly tax and employment, but some corporate and general contract law matters are also relevant).
New and draft UK legislation relevant to share plans.
Consultation papers, guidance and other publications from the UK government, the European Union and other relevant bodies.
Developments in incentives market practice.
Notification of new materials added to the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives website and of any significant changes made to existing materials.
We only cover developments of practical relevance to our subscribers. Our aim is to shield our subscribers from the avalanche of irrelevant information, but keep them abreast of any significant changes. If a case does not change the law, we will not cover it unless it provides a useful clarification of the law.
We do not aim to be the first resource to report on any new development. We report on it when we consider it significant and relevant to our subscribers and once we have identified its practical implications.
The news round-up keeps subscribers up to date with incentives-related news in the UK and abroad from a wide range of sources. The round-up summarises each news item and gives a link to the original source, to provide the most pertinent news in a concise and comprehensive format. The round-up is circulated on the weekly e-mail, bringing essential incentives news to subscribers' inboxes.
The PLC Glossary contains plain-language definitions of key legal and technical terms used in business law contexts.
Not limited to incentives terms, this archive of business legal know-how has been developed by PLC over its 18 years of existence. Terms particularly pertinent to incentives are highlighted under each relevant topic section.
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives provides a directory of links to a number of external websites (for example, government departments and regulators) and documents (such as guidance notes).
For the list of external resources, see PLC Share Schemes & Incentives useful websites (www.practicallaw.com/3-207-5983).
PLC Shares Schemes & Incentives is on Twitter. We are posting tweets with links to all our updates when they are published, so subscribers can keep up to date on Twitter by following us at @PLCIncentives. All PLC updates are already available via RSS. See here (www.practicallaw.com/9-501-3639) for details on how to subscribe to our RSS feeds.
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives is constantly developing. Additional resources and materials are added as we adapt to our subscribers' needs in this fast-paced area of law.
PLC Share Schemes & Incentives keeps under review the range of topics it covers and the type of resources and materials it provides, continually re-evaluating their relevance to provide the best possible service to subscribers.
For a list of the various materials we propose to add this year, see the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives provisional publishing schedule (www.practicallaw.com/9-206-1068).
If you have any suggestions for the service, please e-mail the PLC Share Schemes & Incentives team at incentivesfeedback@practicallaw.com.
For further information on PLC Share Schemes & Incentives or to request a free trial, please contact the PLC Helpline (www.practicallaw.com/A17385).
