Stock 'N Roll

ShareSave (SAYE) turned 45 this year, and it remains the UK's most popular all-employee share plan. We celebrate it with the people who know it best, in a conversation recorded live at our anniversary webinar.

Optio's UK industry lead and former head of ProShare, Murray Tompsett, hosts a panel spanning research, in-house practice, and legal advice: Professor Andrew Pendleton of UNSW Sydney, Michelle Murphy of Evelyn Partners with more than 28 years in share plans, and Emma Parker, Senior Associate at Tapestry Compliance, the 100% employee-owned law firm.

Watch the full webinar here: https://www.optioincentives.com/sharesave-45-evidence

The discussion moves from the headline maturity windfalls to the design and communication choices that separate a plan that simply exists from one that genuinely changes lives, plus the myths that still put companies off.

In this episode:

• Where SAYE came from: the Finance Act 1980 and the first plans in July 1981
• The academic case that ShareSave leads to lasting share ownership, with over half holding at maturity
• Why participation habit, payroll deduction, and clear comms drive take-up
• The employer view: simplicity, low risk, and a genuine recruitment and retention edge
• Design essentials within the legislation: discount, contribution limits, and sourcing shares
• Myth-busting: the tax benefits that survive even without a discount, and why size does not matter

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Join Stock 'N Roll with Christoffer Herheim, CEO and co-founder of Optio, as we break down what works—and what doesn’t—in equity compensation, with insights you can act on.

Pickup rates tell you who signed up for an employee share plan. Engagement tells you whether the plan is actually working, and the two are not the same thing.

Host and Optio CEO Christoffer Herheim sits down with Riccardo Silvestro, a 20-year HR professional with deep experience in equity-based compensation, pensions, and financial wellbeing. Riccardo is a strong advocate for measuring share plans the way you would run any serious programme: with dashboards, clear objectives, and metrics that go well beyond a participation percentage.

They dig into what those metrics look like in practice, from transaction activity to how many new hires enrol in their first 30 days, and why explaining the "why" of a plan matters more than plan generosity. Riccardo shares a cautionary tale about a 20-page enrolment booklet, and a persuasive argument for learning from the structure and governance of the pension world.

In this episode:

• The metrics that reveal real engagement beyond sign-up rate
• Why a simple plan communicated well beats a generous plan nobody understands
• Pull versus push communication, and the "did you know" teaser strategy
• What equity plans can borrow from pension stewardship reporting
• Diversification and the line between education and financial advice
• Realistic participation targets, and why Riccardo still aims for 100 per cent

Whether you are rolling out your first broad-based plan or rethinking an existing one, this is a grounded conversation on driving genuine employee ownership.

Please note: This podcast content is for informational purposes only and is not intended as professional advice. Always consult qualified legal, tax, and financial advisors for guidance specific to your situation.

For more information Check our website: https://www.optioincentives.com/stock-n-roll

Follow Optio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optio-incentives 

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Join Stock 'N Roll with Christoffer Herheim, CEO and co-founder of Optio, as we break down what works—and what doesn’t—in equity compensation, with insights you can act on.

Employee share ownership is more embedded in the UK than almost anywhere else, and this episode goes inside the community that keeps it there. At the centre sits ProShare, the member-funded hub for UK employee share plans since 1992.

Christoffer Herheim is joined by Sophie Altaf, Head of ProShare, with 20 years across the share plan industry, and David Mortimer, Head of External Affairs at ProShare and the Chartered Governance Institute, who leads the lobbying and campaigning work.

They walk through what ProShare is and why it exists, how SIP and SAYE became the UK's bread and butter, and the current push with the Treasury to modernise the plans for the way people actually work today.

In this episode:

• ProShare's origins with the Treasury, the London Stock Exchange and the FTSE 100
• Why tax-advantaged plans like SIP and SAYE became standard in UK companies
• The productivity uplift and "wealth dividend" that broad-based plans can create
• The case for cutting the SIP holding period from five years to two
• How ProShare maps share plan participants to MPs and constituencies to drive change

Whether you work in a listed or private company, advise on equity, or want to build the same kind of community elsewhere, there is a lot to take from this one.

Please note: This podcast content is for informational purposes only and is not intended as professional advice. Always consult qualified legal, tax, and financial advisors for guidance specific to your situation.

Connect with Sophie Altaf and David Mortimer via ProShare.

For more information Check our website: https://www.optioincentives.com/stock-n-roll
Follow Optio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optio-incentives 

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Join Stock 'N Roll with Christoffer Herheim, CEO and co-founder of Optio, as we break down what works—and what doesn’t—in equity compensation, with insights you can act on.

Private equity incentive plans work on a different logic to listed-company schemes: real ownership, real money at risk, and a payoff that only lands at exit. This episode is a working guide to how they are built and who they are built for.

We are joined by Sonia Gilbert, partner at Clifford Chance, where she advises on remuneration with a focus on private equity and management incentivisation. Host and Optio CEO Christoffer Herheim draws on her experience across MIPs, broad-based plans, and everything in between.

The conversation moves from first principles to the practical detail: why capital gains treatment shapes so much design, why companies use pooling vehicles and SPVs rather than putting employees on the share register, and how liquidity windows and top-up incentives keep people motivated when a hold runs longer than planned.

In this episode:

• Management equity versus listed LTIPs, and why ownership is the goal
• Tax as a design driver: capital gains, income, loans, and buying real shares
• How broad to go, and the tiered structures that make it work
• Pooling vehicles, EBTs, and why employees rarely hold shares directly
• Valuation, hurdles, and the waterfall: communicating what a plan is really worth

Whether you advise PE-backed companies or sit inside one, this is a grounded look at what good management incentivisation actually takes.

Please note: This podcast content is for informational purposes only and is not intended as professional advice. Always consult qualified legal, tax, and financial advisors for guidance specific to your situation.

For more information Check our website: https://www.optioincentives.com/stock-n-roll 

Follow Optio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optio-incentives 

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Join Stock 'N Roll with Christoffer Herheim, CEO and co-founder of Optio, as we break down what works—and what doesn’t—in equity compensation, with insights you can act on.

EMI options are the UK's gold standard for startup equity: a tax-advantaged share option scheme that lets growth companies reward employees without the heavy tax charges that hit ordinary options.

Christoffer Herheim, CEO and Co-founder of Optio, sits down with Veronika Lipinska, a Director in BDO's Share Plans and Incentives Practice, to unpack how the Enterprise Management Incentive scheme actually works. Veronika designs and implements equity plans for UK companies and increasingly advises individuals on the equity inside their job offers.

Together they cover what it takes to qualify, how strike prices and tax valuations are set, and a reflection on the April reforms that extended options life to 15 years and raise the employee limit to 500. They also get into the alternatives, from CSOPs to growth shares, for companies that fall outside EMI.

In this episode:

• What EMI is and why it beats a non-tax-advantaged option (18% versus roughly 47%)
• The qualifying criteria for the company, the trade, and the individual
• Strike price, market-value options, and HMRC-approved tax valuations
• The 2025 expansion: 10-year option life extended to 15, employee cap raised to 500
• The two-year holding period and Business Asset Disposal Relief
• When EMI isn't available: CSOPs, growth shares, and US-style instruments

Whether you advise founders or run a share plan yourself, this is a clear, practical guide to one of the most flexible equity schemes in Europe.

Please note: This podcast content is for informational purposes only and is not intended as professional advice. Always consult qualified legal, tax, and financial advisors for guidance specific to your situation.

Connect with Veronika Lipinska on LinkedIn

For more information Check our website: https://www.optioincentives.com/stock-n-roll
Follow Optio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optio-incentives

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Join Stock 'N Roll with Christoffer Herheim, CEO and co-founder of Optio, as we break down what works—and what doesn’t—in equity compensation, with insights you can act on.

Share plans can break at any point in their lifecycle: the story, the instrument, or the economics. Knowing which is which is how you build something that holds up under pressure.

Recorded live at Teuchters Bar in Edinburgh, this episode brings together two guests who have spent careers on opposite sides of the equity table.

Christoffer Herheim, host and CEO of Optio, recorded this episode live at Teuchters Bar in Edinburgh with two guests who have spent careers on opposite sides of the equity table. Nigel Watson heads the incentives practice at Burges Salmon, one of the UK's leading law firms, with decades of experience designing and challenging share plans. David Edwards is Head of Corporate Secretariat and Shareholder Services at NatWest, and has lived through one of the most extraordinary share plan journeys in UK banking history: a share price near 20p when he joined post-financial crisis, and a 15-year road back to £7.

Together they dig into why equity plans overpromise, where they break (the story, the instrument, or the economics), and what practitioners almost never discuss openly: what happens when it all goes wrong.

In this episode:

• The three points where equity plans break: the story, the instrument, and the economics
• Why comprehension matters more than communication, and why most companies confuse the two
• Clawback: real protection or reputational cover?
• Concentration risk and the employer's responsibility to guide employees on diversification
• How NatWest kept employees invested through a decade-long share price recovery
• The equity integrity audit every company should be running annually

Whether you are an in-house reward professional, an advisor, or a founder designing your first plan, this episode asks the questions most practitioners are too polite to raise.

Connect with Nigel Watson on LinkedIn
Connect with David Edwards on LinkedIn

For more information check our website: https://www.optioincentives.com/stock-n-roll
Follow Optio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optio-incentives

Please note: This podcast content is for informational purposes only and is not intended as professional advice. Always consult qualified legal, tax, and financial advisors for guidance specific to your situation.

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Join Stock 'N Roll with Christoffer Herheim, CEO and co-founder of Optio, as we break down what works—and what doesn’t—in equity compensation, with insights you can act on.

This is the first out of two, in our short series on Benchmarking.
 
In this episode, we're talking about benchmarking in general, what it is, why you need it and what competitive equity packages actually look like in the market. We even discuss some key differences between the US and here in Europe. 

The host and CEO of Optio Christoffer Herheim is joined by Michael Sterchi in Zurich who is a leading expert in equity incentive plan design, with extensive experience advising companies across Europe on everything from LTI structures to broad-based employee share plans. 

Whether you're implementing your first equity plan or rethinking an existing one, this conversation is packed with practical advice.

For more information
Check our website: https://www.optioincentives.com/stock-n-roll
Follow Optio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optio-incentives
Read the blog: https://www.optioincentives.com/resource-hub/equity_incentives_competitive_benchmarking

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Join Stock 'N Roll with Christoffer Herheim, CEO and co-founder of Optio, as we break down what works—and what doesn’t—in equity compensation, with insights you can act on.

When organizations design equity incentive plans, they typically focus on the technical details: vesting schedules, strike prices, and regulatory compliance.  But according to Jane Darlington, this approach misses a critical component that can determine whether your program succeeds or fails entirely. Listen to the episode to learn how to build a communication plan that creates understanding, builds trust and connects people to their stake in the company's success. 

"Please note: This podcast content is for informational purposes only and is not intended as professional advice. Always consult qualified legal, tax, and financial advisors for guidance specific to your situation."

For more information
Check our website: https://www.optioincentives.com/stock-n-roll
Follow Optio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optio-incentives
Read the blog: https://www.optioincentives.com/resource-hub/why-communication-makes-or-breaks-equity-programs

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Join Stock 'N Roll with Christoffer Herheim, CEO and co-founder of Optio, as we break down what works—and what doesn’t—in equity compensation, with insights you can act on.

In our latest Stock 'N Roll podcast episode, we sat down with Chris Fallon, Legal Director at Tapestry Compliance, to demystify two of the most prominent all-employee schemes in the UK: the Share Incentive Plan (SIP) and the Save-As-You-Earn (SAYE) plan. 

For those living or operating in the UK, understanding these plans is crucial for optimizing financial benefits related to employee ownership. Tune in to the episode to take a closer look at what was discussed in this enlightening session.

For more information
Check our website: https://www.optioincentives.com/stock-n-roll
Follow Optio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optio-incentives
Read the blog: https://www.optioincentives.com/resource-hub/sip-saye-with-chris-fallon

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Join Stock 'N Roll with Christoffer Herheim, CEO and co-founder of Optio, as we break down what works—and what doesn’t—in equity compensation, with insights you can act on.

In this episode of Stock 'N Roll, we sat down with Tor Daneshmand, CEO and co-founder of Amby, an embedded recruitment company at the forefront of these changes. Tor brings unique insights into how equity is being wielded as a recruitment tool across different markets, from the mature landscapes of the US and UK to the evolving Nordic region.

We'll dive into the art and science of building compelling compensation packages, explore how candidate expectations vary based on risk tolerance and life stage, and uncover the challenges companies face when trying to communicate equity's true value. Whether you're a founder crafting your first equity program or a seasoned executive refining your talent strategy, this conversation offers actionable insights for navigating today's complex compensation landscape.

For more information
Check our website: https://www.optioincentives.com/stock-n-roll
Follow Optio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/optio-incentives
Read the blog: https://www.optioincentives.com/resource-hub/understanding-the-evolving-landscape-of-equity-compensation-in-recruitment

Message us here

Join Stock 'N Roll with Christoffer Herheim, CEO and co-founder of Optio, as we break down what works—and what doesn’t—in equity compensation, with insights you can act on.