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Employee Ownership Blog

Lindsay Isaac

Happy Employee Ownership Month!

The first of October signifies, among other things, the start of gourd season, pumpkin spice flavoring, Halloween decorations, leaves changing, and bidding a (hopefully) fond farewell to summer (and a sad farewell to Jamboard—if you’ve ever participated in an Innovative Communication Coalition meeting or the Communications Committee Crash Course, you get it). But here at the NCEO, it marks the start of Employee Ownership Month (EOM). Since the 80s, Employee Ownership Month has given us the time and space to step back and celebrate employee ownership in all its transformative power.

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Corey Rosen

Harris/Walz Campaign Promises to Promote Employee Ownership

In a recent policy statement, the Harris/Walz campaign became the first presidential campaign to explicitly endorse employee ownership: "In addition, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will reform our tax laws to make it easier for businesses to let workers share in their company’s success, including through broad-based employee stock ownership, profit-sharing plans, and comparable arrangements, with appropriate guardrails to ensure these plans benefit and protect workers."

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Corey Rosen

Six Percent of UK Business Transfers Are Now to Employee Ownership Trusts

In 2014, the United Kingdom passed a law providing a tax exemption for business owners selling to an employee ownership trust (EOT). An EOT is somewhat similar to a U.S. ESOP, but unlike an ESOP, with an EOT the employees do not have individual share accounts and do not have any claim on equity when they leave the company. Instead, the trust is meant to own the company in perpetuity on behalf of the employees, with the employees getting a dividend or profit share each year. New data confirm just how successful this tax incentive has been in encouraging transfers to EOTs in the UK. According to the European Federation of Employed Shareholders, 1,756 UK companies have been transferred to their 124,000 employees via EOTs as of July 2024. About 6% of UK business transfers so far in 2024 have been through EOTs, as the graph below shows.

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Loren Rodgers

Three Cheers for ERISA and Good Governance

One theme of most speakers at our conferences is that ownership culture makes employee-owned companies outperform their competitors. People say that because it’s true and supported by data from many independent researchers. The NCEO is proud to have contributed to that finding.

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Corey Rosen

New Report Identifies 53 Funds Focused on Investing in Employee-Owned Companies

A new report by Curt Lyon and Julie Menter of Transform Finance, Employee Ownership: Overview for Mission-Oriented Investors, identifies 53 funds in the U.S. and Canada that invest partly or entirely in employee-owned companies. Twenty-two of these funds focus only on employee ownership and target raising $1.6 billion to invest. The other funds, which target raising $3.8 billion, invest only some of their assets in employee ownership companies. Five funds focus just on ESOPs, while the others focus on non-ESOP equity sharing.

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