Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) are perhaps one of the most discussed topics in modern corporate management over the past thirty years, and a crucial topic of negotiation between investors and founders in every investment and financing project. Professionals naturally assume that ESOPs can retain talent, motivate staff, and mobilize manpower, thus achieving a win-win-win situation for the company, shareholders, and employees. But what does the actual implementation look like? When studying this series of courses, especially in understanding the operation of employee stock ownership incentives, we should consider the following question and assumption: The essence of employee stock ownership incentives is to inspire employees to work with an entrepreneurial spirit and allow them to participate in the distribution of surplus value. A successfully implemented stock ownership plan is one that encourages more people to participate.

In companies established through joint investments, there will often be disagreement among the shareholders. At this time, the shareholders tend to focus only on the provisions of the company’s articles of association, believing that only major matters stipulated in the articles of association require an absolute majority or a unanimous resolution. What’s more, the majority shareholders of some companies take advantage of their shareholding ratio to force through resolutions that are unfavorable to minority shareholders. In this session, we will discuss with you some common corporate matters which may not be stipulated in the articles of association, but the judicial practice requires a unanimous consent of all shareholders for the adoption of such matters. We hope that through this session, you will have a better understanding of the balance between the interests of shareholders and the efficiency of corporate governance under the company law, which will serve as a reference for the corporate governance.

In 2020, the term “seizing the company seal” became known to the public due to the power struggle between the founders of a well-known e-commerce platform. In recent years, there have been numerous incidents of company seal seizing, not only between shareholders, but also between the chairman of the board who was in jail and the investor. However, is “seizing the company seal” always illegal? Many people may come to the conclusion that it is. Through this session, we would like to introduce to you some rules and practical experience about the custody of the company seal, and we hope that through the sharing of this session, you will have a more comprehensive understanding of the legality of “seizing the company seal”.