Consultation paper: Employee share purchase schemes – proposed exemption relief

First published 16 September 2015

The Financial Markets Conduct Act 2013 provides a statutory exclusion from the standard requirements of the regulated offers regime for employee share purchase schemes in clause 8 of schedule 1.

Market participants’ feedback tells us there are three potential areas of concern in applying this exclusion. The issues relate to:

• offers made to trusts and relatives
• offers of savings scheme securities
• the application of the 10% limit in clause 8(1)(c)(ii).

After reviewing the issues, we propose to address all three by way of exemption relief.  This consultation paper provides details of our initial proposals.

We are seeking feedback on our proposals as well as any additional concerns issuers have when they use the employee share purchase exclusion.

Submissions close on Thursday 15 October 2015.  All comments should be submitted to [email protected] with the subject line: ‘Employee share purchase schemes – proposed exemption relief’: [Your entity name]’.  After the consultation, we will consider submissions with a view to having appropriate exemptions (if any) in place by the end of November 2015.