Growth of Employee Ownership Continues in the UK

According to a report on the 2014-2015 employee ownership survey conducted by Andrew Pendleton and Andrew Robinson, the count of employee-owned businesses in the UK is about four times larger than in the 1990s. The authors cite several factors for the increase, such as legislation, regulatory action, economic shifts toward the service sector, and privatization. Based on the survey, just under half (43%) of employee-owned companies in the UK are directly owned by individual employees, 28% have a trust owning shares on behalf of employees, and the remainder use a hybrid. They also describe the context for the creation of employee ownership as "business succession (32 per cent of the sample), privatisation (15 per cent), where owners wish to widen ownership (24 per cent), and start-ups (23 per cent)."