“There’s an app for that…” has become such a mainstream phrase in our society, it’s hard to remember that it’s only been a handful of years since “app” emerged as a word. As technology and apps have sprouted at light speed, it’s nice to see the trend carry over into our world of equity compensation. The more tools, the better. In today’s blog, I’ll highlight the features of a cool new app that just launched – the Baker & McKenzie Global Equity Matrix app (kudos to anyone who can accurately count how many times I use the word “app” in this blog today.)

Get in the Know

I’m an iPhone user, so I downloaded the app as soon as it was available last week, excited to test drive global stock plan information with a screen touch. By my count, you can presently access select tax and legal information for equity types in 40 different countries. The app is very simple to use – just choose your country, and decide whether you want to see “all” information, or filter the information for stock options, restricted stock/units, or ESPP. Voila, information on things like taxation, subsidiary deductions, exchange controls, securities restrictions, withholding and reporting, plan entitlement and data privacy all appear. Pretty nifty. One thing I really liked was that you can filter by country, equity type, and topic. That means if you only want to see information on data privacy for RSUs in Colombia, you can narrow the field of information and don’t have to scroll through a myriad of other data.