EMI Schemes – The what and the why…

Share Schemes,

Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) schemes are available to anyone who has key team members they would like to hold on to. They are specifically designed for fast growth businesses allowing key management team members to receive tax free shares in the business.

They are a way to reward and tie those key people to your business and encourage them to contribute fully, as they have a stake in the business and are directly rewarded when it succeeds.

They tend to operate over a lengthy period, binding your team to the business for an extended period of years.

We can:

  • Provide advice on the structure of these schemes.
  • Discuss the required scheme rules to ensure compliance with HMRC guidelines.
  • Give advice around the options being granted and exercised.
  • Register the scheme with HMRC and provide valuations of the business for agreement by HMRC at each stage.
  • Take care of annual filings.

A relatively straight forward process to follow, this scheme tends to be under utilised by businesses who often regret not exploring the opportunity to hold on to a key person or key people within the team. 

The key consideration before starting the process with an EMI share scheme though is whether those people are the right ones to help you obtain your long term goals.

If you’d like to know more about EMI schemes or to discuss other ways to increase staff retention, do get in touch. We’re not HR experts, but we have some extremely practical HR advisors within our network who will be able to help further.

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