Must I sell my shares?

Hi all. Apologies if this is a duplicate post or written elsewhere but I could not find anything of note in searches...

I am an employee of a private company, which offers shares options to its staff. Over the past two years I have availed of these options and bought €100k worth of stock.

I was told today that if I resigned my post that I would also have to sell my shares. A rule or condition of the shares was that if I left my job within three years of buying the shares I would have to sell them. The shares were not bought at a preferential price. The price is an internal price decided and voted upon at the companies agm.

Can my employer force me to sell my shares? Are they not my property? Do I not have a right to do whatever I like with them?

It depends on the conditions under which you bought them and the company's Articles of Association & Share Option Scheme - you should ask to see a copy of the Scheme. It's not unusual to require an employee to sell back his/her shares if they leave the company.

What is unusual (in my experience in start up and mid-size software companies) is for such a company to have the money (which they need to have from distributable reserves/profits or from proceeds in relation to the issue of new shares) to do so...