Motivating Employees with Stock Options

by ZS Law

Igor Živkovski, Živković Samardžić Corporate and M&A Partner, gave an interview to Joberty Blog on the legal aspects of stock options and their implementation in practice of Serbian companies.

In the interview Igor explained that in April 2020, due to certain changes of the Law on Business Companies, Serbia became one of the countries where companies offer their employees and other partners the option to become a shareholder under preferential conditions after certain set deadline. Igor also elaborated on relevant procedure for issue of employee stock option plan, as well as the key terminology and steps on how to exercise stock option.

In a nutshell, Igor stated that the issuance of stock options is not considered a public offering, but as a special form of a private placement of financial instruments which is arranged via the Central Registry, Depository and Clearing House of Securities. The issuance of stock options shall be covered by a decision of the General Assembly, or, if so provided in the Articles of Association, by a decision of the board of directors, supervisory board or, as the case may be, the company’s sole director, which decision shall be submitted to the Central Registry, Depository and Clearing House of Securities for registration in the name of individual holders.

If the stock option is not exercised within the set deadline or the company wants to cancel it prior to its maturity, the company shall adopt a decision cancelling the issued stock option and based on that decision shall request deletion of the cancelled options from the Central Registry, Depository and Clearing House of Securities. Options are deleted from the Central Registry, Depository and Clearing House of Securities also upon their exercise and conversion into shares of the company. The acquisition of shares in the company pursuant to the stock options exercise is subject to the registration with the Business Entities Register of the Business Registers Agency.

The interview was concluded with the official publicly available information that currently less than 5 companies in Serbia have registered the right to acquire shares. Hopefully, it is expected that more companies will introduce this possibility because it will have a positive impact on the development of such companies.

Full text of the interview is available here.

Joberty is an employer review and tech jobs platform. Its Blog contains topics relevant to the IT industry in Serbia.

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