Equity Compensation Plans:
Risks and Internal Controls
Real World Issues and Answers

Have stock options backdating scandals raised concerns about your equity plan administration practices? Do you know if your company’s internal controls for equity compensation management and financial reporting are adequate? Do you know which elements of administration practice are most closely examined by auditors?

The Certified Equity Professional Institute (CEPI) of Santa Clara University’s Executive Development Center serves as the educational standard for the equity compensation industry. The CEPI is pleased to offer a one-day in-depth course on July 15, 2008 to assist companies with designing effective internal controls for equity compensation programs.

 

When:	July 15, 2008
Where:	Deloitte
	Two World Financial Center
	New York, NY 10281
Fee:	$795
Online Registration:	Click Here

The course is an extension of the CEPI’s groundbreaking 2007 & 2008 GPS - Guidance, Procedures and Systems research project, which helps companies identify the risks associated with stock options and outlines suggested controls for mitigating those risks.

Who Should Attend?
Anyone involved in equity plan management—from administrators to auditors—will benefit from this practical training. The course will give you the tools to understand key administrative risks with financial statement impacts and how to implement controls to mitigate those risks.

The program will equip you with the tools to:

• Understand which administrative risks have greatest financial statement impact and are most scrutinized by auditors
• Work together more effectively with other departments such as payroll, finance, and treasury
• Identify the most common administrative errors and how to avoid them
• Increase staff awareness and improve communication regarding issues related to stock compensation, financial reporting, and risk environment.
• Better prepare for process and controls audits
• Train new staff assigned to equity compensation

Course outline:
The full-day course covers grant process in the morning and the exercise/vest/release process in the afternoon. Each half-day module covers:

• An overview of the process including data inputs and outputs.
• Identification of common errors and potential opportunities for fraud, focusing on areas that can materially impact the financial statements
• A detailed review of specific processes, associated challenges, risks, controls to mitigate the risk, and suggested tests of the controls
• How outsourcing impacts the process
• A discussion of the associated legal and accounting issues
• Differences between administration of stock options and restricted stock/units

At the end of the session each participant will have a personalized action plan for implementation in their organization.

For more information or to register for this course, please visit

Continuing Education Credit
CEPs will receive 7 hours of Continuing Education credits, which may be applied to the CEPI’s continuing education requirements.

Bring This Course On-Site
This program can be customized to meet the needs of your organization and delivered at your location. For more information, contact Dee Hospodor at 408 554 2187 or cepi@scu.edu.

For additional copies of the GPS - Guidance, Procedures and Systems publication and to see developments on our 2008 research project addressing restricted stock awards and units, please contact the CEPI at cepi@scu.edu. Individual copies can be downloaded as follows:

The CEPI has released Phase One, Phase Two and Phase Three of the GPS research project on risks and controls for equity compensation.

• Phase 3: Legal Issues and Changes in Employment Status, (1.3 MB pdf). Click here to download a copy of Phase 3.
• Phase 2: Exercise Process, Tax and Payroll Issues, Accounting Issues, (1.7 MB pdf) Click here to download a copy of Phase 2
• Phase 1: Introduction, General Administration, Grant Practices, (3.4 MB pdf) Click here to download a copy of Phase 1
  

About the CEPI:
The Certified Equity Professional Institute (CEPI), at Santa Clara University, is the only certification body for equity compensation professionals. The curriculum for the CEPI’s three level, distance learning program covers accounting, corporate and securities laws, taxation, and equity plan design, analysis, and administrative considerations, ensuring that CEP designees have achieved a required level of expertise in all of the relevant areas of equity compensation. http://cepi.scu.edu