"No board approval, no grant" is the right rule. Unapproved grants and out-of-date valuations turn up in almost every diligence process. The UK version is EMI paperwork lagging months behind the conversation where the options were actually promised.
As a seller I've watched good deals stall in the final diligence stretch over exactly this kind of quiet back-office debt, the grant nobody approved, the valuation nobody refreshed. The insight founders miss is that these errors don't cost you when you make them, they cost you at the one moment you have the least leverage to fix them. Anyone planning to raise or sell next year should run this checklist now, while a mistake is still just paperwork and not a bargaining chip in someone else's hands.
This is gold.
"No board approval, no grant" is the right rule. Unapproved grants and out-of-date valuations turn up in almost every diligence process. The UK version is EMI paperwork lagging months behind the conversation where the options were actually promised.
As a seller I've watched good deals stall in the final diligence stretch over exactly this kind of quiet back-office debt, the grant nobody approved, the valuation nobody refreshed. The insight founders miss is that these errors don't cost you when you make them, they cost you at the one moment you have the least leverage to fix them. Anyone planning to raise or sell next year should run this checklist now, while a mistake is still just paperwork and not a bargaining chip in someone else's hands.