WEF and McKinsey Innovate Europe report: UK’s EMI relief held up as means of driving growth

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t the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, the ‘Innovate Europe’ report was published in collaboration with McKinsey.  The report sets out a vision for Europe to become a global leader in innovation, which might be read another way as being a route map for playing catch up with the US and China.

It was heartening to read that – notwithstanding the ongoing Brexit saga and presumably much of Europe continuing to scratch its collective head as regards what it is that the UK wants out of Europe – the UK’s Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) option scheme is being held up as a model for scale across the EU; in short, EMI relief is rightly recognised as a simple way of incentivising management and allowing fast growth companies to compete with larger corporates and multi-nationals for the best talent.

You can read the report here, and the section on attracting entrepreneurial talent is on page 23.  You can also read here HLaw’s explanation of the workings of EMI schemes and how it can be possible to put equity into the hands of management in a tax efficient way without incurring significant upfront costs.

Please do contact us at enquiries@humphreys.law if you would like advice on how to implement an EMI scheme, how to deal with an EMI scheme at exit or anything else to do with EMI schemes and management incentives generally.

Photo credit: World Economic Forum Davos 2019 / Walter Duerst

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