Candace L. Quinn

How Candace Helps Clients

Candace is an executive compensation and employee benefits attorney, with significant international and domestic experience.

She focuses her practice on domestic and cross-border plan design and drafting of executive compensation incentive plans, stock appreciation awards, restricted stock units plans, counselling on incentive stock options, U.S. taxation, and awards addressing technical complexities and tax compliance including Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 409A. Her clients include multinational and domestic corporations, partnerships, joint ventures, Boards of Directors, tax exempt and nonprofit entities in the areas of manufacturing, finance, banking, energy and utilities, technology, healthcare and life sciences, insurance, real estate, higher education, and philanthropy.

In her employee benefits, tax and ERISA practice, she supports clients in consultation and due diligence review of regulatory and operational qualified and non-qualified plans for tax and ERISA compliance. She reviews, designs, and advises on employee benefits plans, health and welfare plans, and retirement tax consulting. She advises on best practices for fiduciary governance standards and internal controls for compliance under the IRC and ERISA. She also regularly conducts and manages U.S. representation in international and domestic M&A due diligence reviews, addressing tax and ERISA issues regarding qualified and non-qualified, executive compensation and employee benefits plan and arrangements.

She advises clients on SEC related executive compensation matters including implementing the pay for performance rule, Dodd-Frank and the SEC clawback policy rule, human capital management disclosure rule, sustainability matters and corporate board diversity.

Candace also specializes in renewable energy project finance, including structuring, tax equity advisory, renewable energy advisory on tax credits and incentives, and M&A renewable energy tax due diligence. She advises on the monetization of energy credits under the Infrastructure Reduction Act (IRA) and proposed regulations and the SEC’s regulations on climate-related disclosure rules. Her energy practice also addresses sustainability issues, counseling and navigating on corporate and fiduciary governance and executive compensation technical complexities, designing ESG metrics linked to executive compensation incentives to support company’s goals and objectives and providing advisory support.

What Clients Can Expect

Candace’s depth of knowledge and expertise, strengthened by her LL.Ms in Tax and Energy, enhances her value and service to her clients. She immerses herself in a clients’ business and helps them prepare and plan for any potential risk. A proactive advisor, she often makes clients aware of legal and legislative developments that may affect them even outside of employee benefits law and connects them with colleagues that practice in different areas. She diligently works to build legal strategies that provide efficient solutions.

Outside the Office

Candace was born and raised in Massachusetts but she has predominantly worked in New York for a significant part of her career with assignments in California and Florida. Candace has three children. They enjoy winter and water sports, and they often ski, swim or scuba-dive in their free time. Active in her community, she serves as a passionate advocate for nonprofits that focus on endangered wildlife conservation, veterans’ issues and women’s health. Candace also serves on the advisory board of a clean hydrogen production company.

I always aim to be proactive, helping my clients see around the corner and prepare for any issue that may affect their business.

Proof Points 

• Advised an international accounting firm with regard to employee benefits and ERISA compliance.
• Provided U.S. representation for a major luxury retail house on international merger and acquisition.
• Advised a significant academic medical center with regard to incentive compensation design for key executives and tax compliance.
• Designed an incentive plan for the advisory board of a hydrogen energy company.
• Analyzed incentive federal and state tax credits for a public utility during an acquisition.
• Represented an international turbine company during a U.S. acquisition.
• Designed incentive plan and bonus plan for key executives of company in the food industry.
• Designed and drafted incentive plans for key executives at an international software logistics company.