Securing ESOP values

Faced with a volatile equity market, Australia’s private banking clients are looking to lock in the value of their shareholdings using equity derivatives products. Nick Sawyer reports

Some Australian banks are seeing a sharp increase in demand for stock option hedging and monetisation strategies from their private banking clients, a market that is traditionally the domain of the corporate equity derivatives business.

With employee stock option schemes a popular incentive among companies in the late 1990s, bankers reckon there’s a vast amount of options that will be exercisable this year. And faced with a volatile equity market, more and more executives and