“1. “Currently we are using “Optionsmanger” database provided by Capita but we were advised, earlier on in the year, that they were dispensing with this software (although I understand they are currently rethinking this) so we have been looking at alternative solutions, namely Equiniti and Cytec Solutions (Cytec provide software known as Sharetrack). Does anyone currently use either of these companies to provide an administration service to their Executive Share plans?
AND
2. Blueprint – we are experiencing difficulty in how to deal with a share capital of a company of ordinary shares which is divided into £0.05/449,754 resulting in a very large share capital figure of 14 digits. ICSA (Blueprint) have advised that it’s not possible to use 14 digits on Blueprint as Companies House only allow six decimal places for their eFiling. Has anyone else encountered this problem – and if so how did they resolve it?”
I have just spoken to Tristan Adams at Capita who is the Optionsmanager relationship manager and he has assured me that Capita have decided that they will keep the Optionsmanager sofeware for the medium to long term and that they are not intending to dispense with it at the moment.
Re QI
We have tried using commercial software for our executive plan with limited success. We have reverted to using a spreadsheet which, although it does not do everything we would like, has proved the simplest, most effective and by far the cheapest solution.
Re Q2
We use a different software supplier but have had a very similar problem. We have spoken directly with Companies House and found that the problem is that their system can’t take a very large share capital figure nor one with a very large share premium. We have found the only solution at present is to file in hard copy.
Re your second question, as far as I know Companies House WebFiling service does have that limitation so the only option is to file paper forms for those companies with large share capital (and pay a higher fee obviously, no matter how unfair that is considering you are not choosing to file a paper form but you are forced to). Last time I checked they were still working on solving that issue.
Q2 Is the nominal value of each share 5p (or 5p divided by 449,754)? The nominal value of the shares in one of our companies is 25p and we have only recently been able to file captial statements electronically with Companies House where the aggregate nominal value was not a whole number. Companies House has updated its software recently to facilitate this.