Shares advice please

dohadeer

My work give employees free shares every 6 months and I'd never paid much attention to them as we were told you have to work for the company for 3 years before you can sell them and I have no intention of still being with the company in 3 years time. I happened to look at the shares today and was amazed to discover that in total I have over £1000 worth!

As stated, they seem to be 'unsellable' until 2016 at least. Does anyone think there could be a way around this? Surely the shares are either mine or they're not? How can it be that I can only sell them after 3 years? I am a complete novice in the share game as you can probably tell.

jimjames

I assume the company can specify what they want and that these are not shares until they vest in 3 years to encourage employees to stay.

If there is a way round then it would make it a pointless scheme so I very much doubt that. Maybe they think it may change your mind about leaving if there is some money there in 3 years?

Spidernick

They are specifically designed to be a tool to retain and motivate staff, so there is no way around this I'm afraid.

Vortigern

dohadeer wrote: »

...we were told you have to work for the company for 3 years before you can sell them.

More likely that you have to hold each distribution of shares for 3 years before you can sell them. You may have to hold for 5 years before you can sell without incurring a tax liability.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/working/bens-shares-tips/shareschemes.htm

BillJones

dohadeer wrote: »

My work give employees free shares every 6 months and I'd never paid much attention to them as we were told you have to work for the company for 3 years before you can sell them and I have no intention of still being with the company in 3 years time. I happened to look at the shares today and was amazed to discover that in total I have over £1000 worth!

As stated, they seem to be 'unsellable' until 2016 at least. Does anyone think there could be a way around this? Surely the shares are either mine or they're not? How can it be that I can only sell them after 3 years? I am a complete novice in the share game as you can probably tell.

It's pretty normal for awards to be granted at some point but then not to "vest" for months or even years afterwards. There generally is no way around this, and it will often be gross misconduct to even mitigate their movement through trading derivatives against them.

In he city, this cost many of us dear in 2008, but there wasn't anything that we could do without breaching the law, our employment contracts, or both.