This session will focus on the challenges faced by listed companies when competing for and negotiating board talent in a global market. As businesses aim to attract and retain leaders who can drive success in a rapidly shifting external landscape, the session will provide insights into the specific challenges encountered in the global market.

Attendees will learn:

• Best practices from a CEO's perspective in attracting and retaining leaders
• Equity's role in negotiating during the hiring process, executive compensation, and senior leader retention
• Investors' expectations of executive compensation and talent

Public event readiness focuses on the actions leading up to the ‘Big Day’. But what happens after that day comes and goes?

This session provides advice on how to avoid an IPO hangover. The panel of experts will cover the items that tend to get lost in the shuffle or deferred in the frantic run up to the public event.

Attendees will learn:

• The key milestones and steps you can take now to guarantee a pain free transaction
• Which administrative tasks, controls and communications are essential to succeed
• How to identify the key stakeholders and how best to communicate with them

In late Q3 2022, the SEC issued the final rules on Pay for Performance. As expected, there were some significant new reporting requirements for the CEO and the Named Executive Officers, particularly around employee equity compensation.

Join this dynamic panel whose expertise and experience will help you feel the changes are as easy as 1-2-3!

Designing the ‘right’ equity plan design that works across different geographies can be challenging. What prospective employees expect, and what investors want, can be driven by local norms. How do global companies keep everyone happy whilst doing what’s right for the company and its strategy?

This session will look at current and emerging trends in executive equity incentives in the UK and US to highlight where there’s common ground, and where practice is diverging. The expert panel includes issuers who will give their front-line perspective on designing and selling plans to both UK and US employee audiences and discuss whether one-size-fits-all designs work, and the influence culture has on plan design.

• Discover how cultural perspectives on pay inform plan design in your country
• Find out how to reconcile pay-for-performance with caps on pay
• Learn whether the challenging economic environment and spiralling cost of living will lead to changes in plan design

As executive pay steps into an increasingly bright spotlight, companies are facing the challenge of setting meaningful performance targets in volatile markets, and what to do if it all goes wrong.

This session looks at the latest trends in discretionary plans and the measures companies are using to recruit and retain top talent.

The expert panel will analyze the pressures that companies are facing when setting and paying executive remuneration, ranging from the latest corporate governance measures, legislative reform and market practice.

• Hear how you can recruit and retain top talent in the current market
• Discover the challenges companies are currently facing when setting and paying executive remuneration including demands of the proxy advisers, pay for performance rules, how to implement malus and clawback effectively and how to deal with 'windfall gains'.
• Find out what’s next for executive plans

How does executive equity compensation differ in public and private companies?

Leveraging the experience of equity professionals who have worked in both the public and private sector, this session will examine the role of equity compensation across various industries and life-stages.

The panel includes a workplace equity consultancy who will share observations around how equity plays a role in creating pay "equity" in an organization.

• Find out how executive equity compensation differs in private and public companies
• Learn how to leverage data and analytics to achieve workplace pay equity
• Discover how to integrate data with market practice when developing equity strategy

Corporate transactions can have knock-on effects for outstanding equity awards and plans.

This session explores best practice on the approach and communication of these changes to awards, including the administrative and timing challenges encountered when reflecting award adjustments on broker platforms.

The expert panel includes senior representatives from Atlassian and CSL who will share their experiences, including managing awards during the re-domiciliation from a UK to a US parent company, and the equity award challenges resulting from a $11.7 billion acquisition.

• Discover the common pitfalls when adjusting awards post-transaction including which transactional adjustments can trigger tax and regulatory issues for issues that have granted in multiple countries
• Find out how to provide accurate, bespoke, meaningful and concise communication of the changes to participants
• Review how to prepare equity award databases to reflect adjusted awards, dealing with rounding and black-out periods

Who doesn’t love freedom of choice! As employee needs become more diverse and individualized than ever, flexibility in reward and benefits packages is increasingly important.

Introducing equity choice plans is a way to empower employees to tailor and maximize the impact of their equity awards.

This panel will discuss the effective use of these plans that offer employees the opportunity to choose the types of equity awards that make up their total compensation package.

• Discover which equity awards are commonly included in choice plans
• Hear from organizations who are leading the way
• Learn about the pros, cons, and considerations of choice awards

The payroll team is a key equity program stakeholder and plays an important role in ensuring that the complex rules for equity are navigated, and delivery in cash or reporting for equity is accurate.

This session pays a visit to the ‘Payroll Doctor’ to address the key remedies for managing, updating, and withholding in various countries around the world.

Whether you are new to delivering equity or are venturing into new countries, this session promises some key takeaways that can avoid a casualty for your equity program.

• Hear how to work with payroll to achieve full equity program compliance
• Learn the tips and traps of expanding globally
• Learn valuable lessons from corporate issuers and service providers

With a global recession on the horizon and the effects of the ‘Big Squeeze’ being felt across all industries, how do companies continue to keep employees engaged and maintain and encourage participation in their equity compensation schemes?

This panel will focus on how companies are navigating the current climate and what they’re doing to keep equity at the forefront of their talent acquisition and retention strategies.

• Discover how to make equity part of your company culture
• Find out how to avoid the fall out of ‘The Great Resignation’ and ‘Quiet Quitting’
• Hear how to keep employees engaged through innovative initiatives and targeted communications