Liz is a Partner in the Remuneration and Incentives team within the Employment Group, with over 25 years' tax experience, specialising in advising clients on all forms of share plan and equity incentive and employee ownership arrangements.
She advises clients, from private scale-ups to mature multi-national public companies, across all sectors but, in particular, those in construction, life sciences, fintech and business services.
Liz is an expert in equity incentives and reward, helping companies to establish, de-risk and optimise employee and NED share plans and supporting employers to manage the incentive implications of corporate events.
Liz understands the particular nuances of family-owned and employee-owned businesses and enjoys helping companies to align their reward approach to better support ESG aims. She also advises in relation to Enterprise Investment Scheme venture capital relief.
Key Experience
- Advising a life sciences tech company to implement new share plans across multiple jurisdictions, health-check existing Enterprise Investment Scheme ('EIS') positions for tax-risk and update share plans to navigate de-SPAC IPO transaction;
- Supported various founder-led businesses on ownership succession via implementation of an Employee Ownership Trust ('EOT') arrangement
- Advised in relation to a growth shares plan in a listed company subsidiary for multi-jurisdictional employees
- Advising on design, implementation and care and maintenance of tax-free qualifying bonus plans for EOT-controlled companies
- Advising growth stage companies on EIS eligibility and dovetailing new employee equity incentives arrangements to ensure there is no adverse impact on investor tax relief
- Identifying tax-risk arising from a defective employee share plan and supporting the employer to take remedial action to improve outcomes for all parties
- Advising individual executives on the tax treatment of their award offers, impact of transactions and supporting to negotiate terms to optimise outcomes
- Advising on incentive design, implementation and tax treatment for UK and overseas parent issuer companies and their global and internationally mobile workforces, whether on a discretionary or all-employee plan basis
- Acting buy-side or sell-side to support optimising equity incentive outcomes on deals (whether PE, trade sale, IPO or other form of majority or minority exit transaction)
- Provided expert opinion on employment-related securities
Career History
Director, Reward, KPMG LLP
Head of Share Schemes, Mazars LLP
Director, The RM2 Partnership Limited
Associate Director, Tax, RSM Tenon
Senior Consultant, Reward, Chiltern Plc
Tax Department Manager, WSM Partners LLP
European Business School, ESG Expert Diploma
University of Leicester, LL.M Employment Law and Relations
College of Law, Guildford, Legal Practice Course
King's College London, LL.B (Hons)