Ifs proshare
ifs ProShare is a member led, not-for-profit organisation that acts as the voice of the employee share ownership industry in the UK.
History
Established by the Treasury, London STOCK Exchange and a number of FTSE 100 companies in 1992 to promote employee share ownership.
Employee share ownership is where employees own shares in the company that they work for, more often than not through an HMRC approved employee share plan i.e. a Save As You Earn (SAYE) Share Incentive Plan (SIP) Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) plan or a Company Share Option Plan (CSOP). Over 2 million employees in the UK currently own shares in the company they work for as a result of their participation in an HMRC approved employee share plan.
This is not the same as Employee Ownership as conducted by the likes of Arup and the John Lewis Partnership John Lewis Partnership - where employees theoretically own either a substantial stake of the company or the whole of the company.
The organisation was acquired by financial education charity the ifs School of Finance in 2004. Since then the organisation has been run by Anne Kiem 2005-2008 then Phil Hall 2008-2009 and again Anne Kiem 2009 – present. During this time the organisation has had a number of people undertaking the public facing role of Head of Employee Share Ownership:
Name |
Date |
|---|---|
2004 - 2008 |
|
2008 - 2011 |
|
Alexy Armitage |
November 2010 – March 2011 |
July 2011 – present |
Historical note:
Due to financial difficulties ProShare was split into two organisations in 2004. The private investment clubs element of the organisation was purchased by Digital Look and continues to trade under the ProShare name.
The student investor and the employee share ownership elements of the organisation were successfully acquired by financial education charity the ifs School of Finance.
The Student Investor competition for teenagers is now operated as part of the ifs School of Finance financial capability offering as the ifs Student Investor. The employee share ownership aspect of the original ProShare company now operates under the brand name “ifs ProShare”.
Role
The role of ifs ProShare is to liaise with and lobby HM Revenue & Customs, HM Treasury, the FSA and other industry bodies on the impact of the legal, regulatory and fiscal environment on employee share ownership. They also have regular interaction with politicians across all parties, the media and a wide range of stakeholders to improve awareness and understanding of employee share ownership.
For example, a 2012 ifs ProShare campaign has focused on increasing the maximum amount employees can save in an all-employee share plan i.e. SAYE and SIP share plans. This has the support of politicians from all parties and has been covered in a number of national news publications. Campaigns such as these exert pressure on the Government to make improvements in the interests of individual employee shareholders.
Other activities include the ifs ProShare Annual Awards Dinner for over 600 professionals working in the employee share ownership industry and the ifs ProShare Annual Conference.
ifs ProShare has approximately 100 members. These include a wide range of SMEs as well as larger companies such as Asda, BP, BT, HSBC, National Grid and Marks & Spencer as well as share plan administrators and advisers including Capita, Computershare, Equiniti, Killik Employee Services, Linklaters and PWC.