Financial Planning firm Tavistock has again rescheduled its shareholder meeting to vote on its review of leadership team incentivisation after shareholders expressed more concerns over the proposed deal.

The general meeting has been rescheduled again to 7 April as the board looks to replace the resolution for a second time.

Tavistock is reviewing its leadership team incentivisation as it looks to remove the use of share options in a bid to boost profits.

Historically the Financial Planning firm has issued share options with the largest number of options being issued to the leadership team.

However, the accounting treatment of share options results in substantial share-based payment charges in its profit and loss account, which reduces the level of reported pre-tax profit and hits its share price.

Instead the Financial Planning firm’s board has recommended that the use of share options as an incentive is “no longer fit for purpose.”

The board originally wrote to shareholders in November to seek support for the introduction of a new incentive schemes. However, some shareholder contacted the board with concerns that the proposal would favour the interests of the leadership team over those of shareholders, leading to the original general meeting being postponed to 25 March to allow for a reappraisal of the proposal.

The adjusted proposal was shared with shareholder on 1 March. However, the board has now been made aware of some more concerns over the possibility that “A Ordinary Shareholders could receive benefit under the Amended Proposal at a lower share price than they could have under previous share option arrangements”, which had exercise prices of 5.25p, 6p and 6.5p.

Tavistock today announced to that “in order to provide additional reassurance to Shareholders and to remove this as a possibility the Board has decided to modify the Amended Proposal so that no benefit can be achieved by A Ordinary Shareholders, in any circumstances, at a share price of less than 7p.”

Executive directors Brian Raven and Oliver Cooke (chairman) have already agreed to surrender the share options which have been issued to them, which the board said will enhance the level of pre-tax profit reported by the firm in the current financial year by approximately £400,000.

Under the new proposal, any potential reward for the leadership team is directly linked to the prior delivery of value to the shareholders, a one-off assessment of the value delivered to shareholders by the leadership team will be made in June 2025 by reference to the price per ordinary share, and in the event of a merger/acquisition before June 2025 a one-off assessment will be made at this point.

• Editor's Note: The General Meeting scheduled for 7 April has now been moved to 8 April due to the Easter holidays.