https://www.ft.com/content/9b6981cf-7444-4057-9791-b40ef1cdb...https://archive.is/2sJfX
> In the case of payments group Stripe, RSUs worth millions of dollars will start expiring from 2024 and risk being forfeited unless the company buys them out, changes the terms of the awards or launches an IPO.
> Employees face a personal tax liability when RSUs vest. But staff are unable to sell any of these shares without the company launching a flotation. To get around the problem, Stripe wants to withhold a portion of the stock equivalent to the tax liability from employees’ awards. Separately, it plans to sell stock to investors, using the money raised to pay the employees’ tax bills and buy up any stock they wish to sell.
> Stripe intends to raise enough to cover the tax bill associated with the RSUs handed out to many of its 8,000 employees since 2017, and will hold back some of the value of employees’ shares as compensation, according to a person familiar with the matter.
> “Stripe has realised they have to help the employees out,” said Glen Kernick, Silicon Valley leader at valuations provider Kroll. “When they [RSUs] vest, that’s a taxable event. As an employee, you now own the shares and owe tax but you don’t have the ability to pay your tax bill by selling shares. That’s obviously viewed as a hardship.”
TLDR stripe needs cash to pay taxes to provide employee liquidity if they don’t IPO, and this ain’t a great macro to IPO
Tangentially, private equity in the tech startup space on the secondary market is currently transacting at a ~40% discount.