In addition to traditional share delivery arrangements, the EBT trustee can hold assets in a nominee capacity, holding legal title to assets on behalf of beneficiaries. This might facilitate:a corporate nominee facility, encouraging and enabling long term shareholding by employeesa management incentive plan, giving employees genuine personal shareholding and engagement, but with the confidentiality of holdings and ease of administration that comes from having just one legal owner on the cap tablelock-in arrangements after a corporate eventassisting in corporate events – holding assets on behalf of a number of employees, pending their release into a transaction or listing

As well as holding assets to satisfy specific awards, an EBT trustee might hold unallocated assets (including shares, fund units, cash, or loan notes) for many purposes, including:to hedge liabilities under phantom or matching share awardsto warehouse reserved or recycled shares for later useto provide an internal market for employee shareholders in otherwise illiquid stock

Employee Benefit Trusts (EBT) Services

Safeguarding trust assets with flexibility and independence

An employee benefit trust (EBT) is a flexible vehicle used in conjunction with remuneration, incentivisation and tax planning structures.

Teamed with the right incentive plans, an EBT enables you to give employees a stake in your success and evolve with your corporate strategy.

Our dedicated team has been operating in the employee benefits industry for over 25 years as an independent provider of trustee services to a broad client base ranging from high profile FTSE 100, 250 and 350 companies to private companies and partnerships.

From management incentive plans, employee share plans to fund deferral arrangements; whatever your incentive strategy, we work with you and your advisers to set up your EBT, act as a trustee or nominee, and manage the EBT effectively.

We can help you

Employee benefit trust (EBT) services

EBT set up

We will create an employee benefit trust tailored to your needs

Guide: Navigating the complexity of employee benefit trusts

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Provision of trustee and trust oversight

We act as trustee to hold the assets required to satisfy the company's requirements at any share delivery event linked to their employee incentivisation programme. We are involved in acquiring the shares into the trust to help the client hedge their commitments.

Our role is to ensure sufficient shares are held so that the trustee can deliver those shares to the company directly or their share plan administrator on the date the employee reward is paid out.

Nominee services

In addition to traditional share delivery arrangements, the EBT trustee can hold assets in a nominee capacity, holding legal title to assets on behalf of beneficiaries. This might facilitate:

a corporate nominee facility, encouraging and enabling long term shareholding by employees
a management incentive plan, giving employees genuine personal shareholding and engagement, but with the confidentiality of holdings and ease of administration that comes from having just one legal owner on the cap table
lock-in arrangements after a corporate event
assisting in corporate events – holding assets on behalf of a number of employees, pending their release into a transaction or listing

Hedging of awards

The funding and sourcing of shares to efficiently deliver reward to employees is an important factor for our clients when considering the implementation of employee incentive arrangements. Using EBTs to hold shares to hedge incentive awards is a well-trodden path, offering a cost-effective way of funding your incentive plan commitments for large release events.

Our expert employee incentive services team, work with our clients, their advisers, and brokers to ensure the execution of an appropriate hedging strategy to achieve significant cost savings and simplified administration of major releases.

Our team have experience of using complex products to reduce the risk of pricing surprises; and settling structured purchase plans to mitigate the effect of purchases on the market, enable purchases to continue unaffected by closed periods, and reduce costs and volatility issues via off market purchases.

Warehousing

As well as holding assets to satisfy specific awards, an EBT trustee might hold unallocated assets (including shares, fund units, cash, or loan notes) for many purposes, including:

to hedge liabilities under phantom or matching share awards
to warehouse reserved or recycled shares for later use
to provide an internal market for employee shareholders in otherwise illiquid stock

Why Ocorian?

Trusted by FTSE 100 companies

We manage employee incentive schemes for over >20% of FTSE companies.
Dedicated and personal service

We provide a dedicated point of contact to provide efficient communication and build a team around your needs.
Online portal

Our user-friendly portal provides a golden source of information. It offers an advanced document repository and reporting tool in one.