Employees share option

OVERVIEW

Client had obtained templates from various sources in order to create a company’s employees share option plan. His idea was to draft simple documents based on his experience, having been previously the beneficiary of employees share option plans with former employers, he felt he had sufficient knowledge to prepare the draft himself. Yet, he contacted us to review the drafts he prepared to ensure they were adequate and lawful.

 

CHALLENGE

Client’s initiative to draft documents himself was a clear indication that the project was on a restricted budget and we initially offered an estimates in 2 steps: first to review the documents drafted by client and make general suggestions of amendments, then to make the amendments agreed in markup in the project, discuss such with client and finalise the documents for signature. The budget for the second step would be given with the delivery of the first step.

But we realized that the drafts prepared by clients were not properly structured for the project (he had used templates containing provisions non consistent between them) and required a large number of amendments to patch them up which would involve a many hour of work for a result which may remain quite unsatisfactory.

 

ACTIONS

We highlighted the main inconsistency to client and explained it would be more cost effective to use our package for employees share options plans which include the necessary board and members resolutions templates to implement the plan once adopted. We provided detailed documentation on the package as well as an article we published on Zegal’s blog to help client take an educated decision.

 

OUTCOME

Client agreed to our offer and received the draft employees share option plan within 5 working days, together with a list of questions to finalize the draft. After providing the answers to our questions, a call was arranged with our client for addressing remaining questions he may have. During the call, our client explained he had been very agreeably surprised by the clarity and exhaustiveness of the employees share option plan provided.