You are part of an employee committee demanding higher compensation from your company. Your main request: stock participation. You're tired of the fat cat owners getting rich off the sweat of your labor. You want your share.
Stock options are the obvious fix. However, there are problems. Stock options require the individual employees to purchase the stocks involved. If you are granted 100 stock options with a $15 strike price, you have to come up with $1,500 to get the shares.
There's another potential fix: stock appreciation rights.
SARs are similar to stock options, but they only cover the appreciation in the stock value over a period of time. They get paid out as either stock or as cash. Unlike a stock option, the employee doesn't have to buy them...they just get the cash or stock.
A stock rises from $15 to $20 during a year. The employee has 100 SARs, paying off anually in cash. They receive $500 for that increase in the share price. It's like a bonus tied to stock performance.
Related or Semi-related Video
Finance: What is a Warrant?8 Views
Finance allah shmoop what is ah warrant Oh it's Acute
option Like kind of a stock option Light Yeah That's
How to think about it anyway Okay Okay It pretty
much feels just like a stock option And yes there
are put warrants and call warrants in the same vein
as put options and call options So then what's the
diff why don't we just call a warrant a stock
option Well warrants have you know their own little characteristics
here and they're usually issued by the company itself where
a stock options on say microsoft will They can be
issued by anyone who deals in options like goldman morgan
ups sumitomo whoever whatever investment bank that makes capital markets
trading happened they can issue options trade him have a
spread and then make profits in them and there's nothing
the company can really do about it They can all
create derivative securities on stocks or bonds of their own
volition And the company itself just kind of stands there
looking by and wondering why they didn't get into the
investment banking business Well goldman morgan and the others then
offer trading in those options on exchanges in regular form
Such that many buyers and sellers generally come together liquid
lee to trade and you know generate profit margins for
the desks of the bank's trading the securities right The
banks are basically the casino house and they end up
making most the money most of time Got that Okay
another difference warrants and options here Warming's can last five
ten twenty years that's Usually how many weeks options last
and the question remains Why would a company issue what
are essentially cheap stock options too Others to buy slices
of its own pie While the answer as with most
of these types of company deals is that the company
has to issue those warrants to get a deal done
like you know to settle a patent dispute or created
distribution or manufacturing partnership or some of their tactical arrangement
to make the good better and to make the problems
go away well warrants generally or simply held for the
duration of the partnership or of the company's existence is
an independent and city well and conversely options are traded
liquid leon exchanges all over the world and they can
be sold without a whole lot of discussion with company
Here this kind of warrant which gives you the right
to throw a piece of paper in your own financial
asset jail Very different kind of warrant than this one 00:02:18.383 --> [endTime] You stay away from the arrest warrants
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