Employee Ownership Outside the U.S.

Employees of Société Général, one of Europe's largest financial services companies, bought newly issued shares representing 0.54% of the company's ownership. Société Général has 160,000 employees, and 28,900 current and former employees in 33 countries paid €81 million ($103 million) to buy shares at a 20% discount as part of the company's employee share ownership plan.

In the United Kingdom, a report on privatization of public sector services via worker cooperatives was released on June 25. The commissioned by the Cabinet Office concludes that the number of these cooperatives, or mutuals, has increased six times since 2010 and that they are dispersed across the country. The Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, says, "All the evidence shows that employees who have a stake in their business, or take ownership of it completely, have more power and motivation to improve the services they run." The report notes that 50,000 public sector workers are now in mutuals, well short of the government's goal of one million by 2015.

Also in the UK, the chief executive of the London Stock Exchange called for increasing use of employee stock ownership. In an op-ed in the UK's newspaper the Telegraph on June 24, Xavier Rolet called for four steps to shift corporate finance from debt to equity, one of which was "to reinvigorate employee share-ownership schemes, empowering a much broader spectrum of people to invest in the company they work for."

Ho Chi Minh City Infrastructure Investment Joint Stock Company, whose primary assets include water treatment plants and toll roads serving Ho Chi Minh City and surrounding areas, announced that it had issued 60,000 shares to its employee stock ownership plan (ESOP). The same day the company's president, Le Quoc Binh, announced that he would buy 700,000 shares.