Employee Ownership Blog

Corey Rosen

ESOP Pass-Through Voting and the New DOL Guidance on Proxy Voting

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.  

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Corey Rosen

Finding Diverse Candidates for ESOP Boards

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.

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Jaymie Oviedo

NCEO Holiday Gift Guide Is Here

It's no secret: here at the NCEO, we love to see members of the ESOP community thrive.  In a year that has been challenging in many ways, the NCEO came together in a team collaboration to highlight just a few of our favorite employee-owned companies that are uplifting employee ownership in their own businesses. This season, we hope to spread cheer throughout the entire ESOP community and beyond.

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Corey Rosen

Biden Names Key Pro-Employee Ownership Advisers

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.

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Timothy Garbinsky

Giving Thanks in 2020

This Thursday I'll be presenting to our friends in the Netherlands about how American ESOP and other employee-owned companies have fared during this pandemic. And though I usually wouldn't be fully awake until the second football game of the day, I'm actually excited at the prospect of waking up at 6:30 am on a holiday.

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Timothy Garbinsky

ESOP-Owned Black & Veatch Focuses on Sustainable Energy

Employee ownership provides a lot of benefits to employees, communities, and companies, but one of the less discussed but most important features of employee ownership is that it allows companies to focus on long-term goals and values, not the short-term goals of public company shareholders or private equity firm buyers. Black & Veatch is the 10th-largest majority ESOP-owned company and the 12th-largest engineering company (in fact, 7 of the top 20 are employee-owned, and 6 are NCEO members). Recently, it made a major decision to focus on sustainable energy products and move away from any coal-related projects.

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