Note 20: Share options

The Company has issued options over its shares to employees as follows:

Share option type	Number of shares	Option price per share	Option grant date
Next Fifteen Communications
Executive Share Option Schemes	25,900	39.75p	19 May 1998
	122,000	47.25p	19 August 1999
	18,000	215p	22 November 2000
	210,000	60p	21 May 2001
	110,000	23.5p	23 October 2001
	506,667	30p	22 October 2002
	395,001	59.5p	22 October 2003
	1,387,568

 

Next Fifteen Communications Californian Executive Share Option	Number of shares	Option price per share	Option grant date
Schemes	3,000	60p	21 May 2001
	99,000	30p	22 October 2002
	250,334	59.5p	22 October 2003
	30,000	63p	12 May 2004
	382,334
Next Fifteen Communications Long-Term Incentive Plan	86,112	56p	16 June 2005
	99,106	56p	11 November 2005
	29,545	66p	10 April 2006
	108,241	62p	18 October 2006
	323,004
Performance shares	Number of shares	Performance period start date	Performance period end date
Next Fifteen Communications Long-Term Incentive Plan	382,263	1 August 2004	31 July 2007
	464,510	1 August 2005	31 July 2008
	453,295	1 August 2006	31 July 2009
	1,300,068
Conditional shares	Number of shares		Vesting period
Next Fifteen Communications Stock Unit Agreement	83,333		June 2007 -June 2008

Under the Next Fifteen Executive Share Option Schemes, save as explained hereafter, all options are normally exercisable on or after the third anniversary of the date of grant and remain exercisable until the tenth anniversary of the date of the grant, to the extent that they have vested. Options will vest in respect of one-third of the shares on each of the third, fourth and fifth anniversaries of their date of grant. Options granted to employees in California from 23 October 2001 are exercisable at a rate of 20% per year over five years from the date of grant. The vesting of all share options granted after 30 November 1999 is conditional on achievement of a performance criterion of the Group’s earnings per share growing over a three-year period after the grant by at least 30%.

1,370,711 share options/performance shares issued by the Company under the Next Fifteen Communications Executive Share Option Schemes and Long-Term Incentive Plan are options over unissued shares. The remaining 2,105,596 options/performance shares/conditional shares will be satisfied by shares held by the Employee Share Ownership Plan (ESOP) (see note 21).

Under the new Next Fifteen Long-Term Incentive Plan, the performance test (as detailed in the Remuneration report on page 37) for share options and performance shares is measured over a period of three consecutive financial years of the Group, commencing with the financial year in which the award is granted. The performance condition is an earnings per share (“EPS”) target. If the average growth in the Group’s adjusted EPS over the performance period exceeds the growth in the Retail Prices Index by at least 15% per annum, 100% of the award will vest. If the average growth in the Group’s earnings per share over the performance period exceeds the growth in the Retail Prices Index by at least 5% per annum, 20% of the award will vest. For EPS growth of between 5% and 15% the award will vest between 20% and 100% (calculated on a straight-line basis).

In June 2005 the Company granted a conditional share award to Aedhmar Hynes, CEO of Text 100. The one-off award vests equally over the first three anniversaries of the date of the award provided Aedhmar remains employed by the Group. Accordingly, 166,667 shares have already vested and were transferred to Aedhmar from the ESOP.