Unlocking Wealth from IPOs, Recaps, and Tender Offers
An IPO, tender offer, or recapitalization can be a once-in-a-career opportunity to build wealth, and a source of confusion, stress, and costly mistakes. Whether you’re holding RSUs, ISOs, NSOs, or ESPP shares, the decisions you make now may shape your financial future.
At Mercer Advisors, we can help demystify the process for you, and help you avoid making any decisions that could result in a hefty tax bill from the IRS.
What We Help You Plan For
Your equity event could be a major turning point in your financial life. We help you make the most of it with planning that’s proactive, personalized, and built to help protect your future.
Our unified in-house team of advisors, tax professionals, and estate planners works together to help you:
- Plan for RSU vesting with proactive tax and liquidity strategies
- Strategically exercise ISOs and NSOs to preserve gains and minimize tax exposure
- Prepare for lockup periods with a diversification plan that reduces risk
- Time asset liquidation to support your goals and avoid costly missteps
- Use pre-IPO estate and gifting strategies to help protect your legacy and reduce future tax liability
- Coordinate across equity, tax, and other investments so every decision supports your broader financial life
Specialized Services for Liquidity Events
- Equity Event Tax Timing Simulator: Model AMT, capital gains, and withholding gaps across multiple scenarios.
- Tender Offer Decision Support: Personalized guidance on whether, when, and how much to sell.
- Post-IPO Lockup Exit Strategy: A 12-month roadmap for diversifying and managing taxes after your lockup ends.
- Equity Compensation Audit: A forensic review of your ISOs, RSUs, ESPP, and refresh grants.
- Pre-IPO Liquidity Stress Test: Model your net worth and cash flow under different valuation outcomes.
- Equity-Focused Estate Planning: Trust and gifting strategies for illiquid or pre-IPO shares.
- Liquidity Event Concierge: Real-time support during IPOs or tender windows.
- Custodian Integration (Fidelity, Schwab): Sync your equity platform with our planning tools for seamless visibility.
Mercer Advisors is not a law firm and does not provide legal advice to clients. All estate planning documentation preparation and other legal advice is provided through select third parties unaffiliated to Mercer Advisors, depending on the complexity of the estate, additional fees may apply. Tax preparation and tax filing services typically requires a separate fee from our investment management and planning services.
Tender Offer or IPO? Know the Difference
Both IPOs and tender offers can create liquidity, but the implications are very different. Here are some quick definitions:
- IPO: Public listing of company shares, often followed by a lockup period and staged liquidity.
- Tender Offer: A private or secondary market opportunity to sell shares, often with limited windows and lots of tax complexity.
We help you evaluate:
- When to sell (and how much)
- How each event affects your tax liability
- Whether to participate or wait
Why Mercer Advisors?
Equity event specialists
across IPO, PE, VC, and recap clientsTax-smart financial plans
that reduce surprises and increase confidenceDeep experience
with RSUs, ISOs, NSOs, and concentrated stock positionsA Family Office For Your Family
built around your life, not just your assetsAdditional Solutions to Support Your Equity Event
Your IPO, tender offer, or recapitalization is just one part of your financial picture. Mercer Advisors offers integrated planning across tax, estate, and investment disciplines to help you manage complexity, preserve your wealth, and stay aligned with your long-term goals.
Recapitalizations & Executive Equity Events
Recapitalizations can be just as impactful as IPOs, and just as complex.
- What is a recapitalization? A restructuring of a company’s capital, often involving new debt or equity.
- Types: Dividend recaps, leveraged recaps, or PE-led restructurings.
- Implications: May trigger liquidity, tax events, or changes in control.
We help you:
- Understand how your equity is affected
- Plan for liquidity and reinvestment
- Align your wealth strategy with long-term goals
FAQs
-
A tender offer is a company or investor’s offer to buy shares from existing shareholders, often at a premium. It can provide early liquidity but may have tax and strategic implications.
-
RSUs (Restricted Stock Units) don’t require you to take action to “sell” them at vesting; they convert into shares automatically on a set schedule. Once vested, you own the shares and can choose whether to hold or sell them, depending on your goals, tax situation, and market conditions.
We help you evaluate the right time to sell based on your broader financial picture, including your tax bracket, cash flow needs, and portfolio diversification strategy. Our team models different scenarios so you can make confident, informed decisions about what to do with your shares once they vest. Here’s a quick primer on options to consider with vesting RSUs.
-
After an IPO, employees are typically restricted from selling shares for 6 months. We help you plan for what happens before, during, and after the lockup.
-
ISOs may qualify for favorable tax treatment but can trigger AMT. NSOs are taxed as ordinary income at exercise. We help you plan accordingly.
-
It’s a restructuring of a company’s capital structure, often used to return capital to investors or prepare for a sale. It can affect your equity and liquidity.
-
A blackout period is a window of time when you’re restricted from selling company stock or exercising options, often around earnings announcements, IPOs, or other corporate events.
If your RSUs vest during a blackout, you may receive the shares but be unable to sell them until the restriction lifts. We help you plan so these windows don’t disrupt your liquidity or tax strategy.
