Corey Rosen
The recent COVID-19 relief bill attached to the Consolidated Appropriations Act allows certain retirement plan sponsors who laid off or furloughed employees due to the pandemic to avoid a partial plan termination.
Corey Rosen
The $900 billion economic relief bill that just passed both the Senate and the House of Representatives includes a new round of funding for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), providing an additional $284 billion for the program.
Corey Rosen
The issue of whether trustees can and should override participant directions on offers to buy shares in a proposed acquisition of an ESOP company has been one of the most ambiguous areas of ESOP law and practice. New guidance from the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) (29 CFR 2550.404a-1) on proxy voting of shares in retirement plans, including on environmental, social, and governance metrics, includes a brief section addressing this issue, essentially putting into regulatory form what had been just guidance.
Corey Rosen
Many ESOP companies are looking to diversify their board membership but have a hard time knowing where to look. Board members tend to come from existing networks of CEOs, and tend to be older white males. Research shows that cognitive diversity on boards leads to better decisions. Board members who can think differently about issues and who are willing to challenge existing norms can help companies move forward. Demographic diversity does not guarantee cognitive diversity, but it may help. For many companies, of course, diversity is a goal in itself even if it does not lead to different decisions.
Corey Rosen
On December 2, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city would start Employee Ownership NYC, an outreach program to encourage business owners to sell to their workers.
Corey Rosen
President-elect Joe Biden has named Jared Bernstein to the Council of Economic Advisers. Bernstein wrote a 2016 paper, Employee Ownership, ESOPs, Wealth, and Wages, for the Employee-Owned S Corporations of America (ESCA) on why employee ownership is important. Bernstein said that he did not support further tax incentives, but did support a federal outreach program on ESOPs and conditioning current corporate tax incentives on sharing ownership.
Corey Rosen
Huawei Technologies is the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world and the second-largest manufacturer of smartphones. It has close to 200,000 employees worldwide, mostly in China. It also claims to be employee-owned, which, if true, would make it the second-largest majority employee-owned company in the world, just after Publix in the US.
Corey Rosen
Updated November 2, 2020
Corey Rosen
Colorado has become the most recent state to create a state employee ownership center. Governor Jared Polis has created the Employee Ownership Office as a standalone center in the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT). The office will have its own dedicated staff. It has $1.75 million in funding over the next two years.
