Employee Ownership Blog

If you have not already considered attending the Great Game of Business conference May 4-6 in St. Louis, I would strongly encourage you to do so. The NCEO and the Great Game have a long history of working together, and I have been to all their conferences.

The taxation of employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs) is sufficiently complex that even people who know the field sometimes get confused. So imagine how hard it is for employees to figure it out.

If you are not already registered for our 30th annual conference in Denver, you should register now. We currently have a record number of registrants, and if we reach our maximum we will not be able to take additional registrations on site.

Stock & Option Solutions, an equity compensation service provider, has created a brief survey to gather input about new activities it is considering to support equity compensation in private companies. We encourage issuing companies (not vendors or consultants) to fill out the survey.

The top five executives of the 1,500 largest corporations in the U.S. averaged $25 to $30 billion per year in non-salary compensation between 2001 and 2007, according to a new report, Inclusive Capitalism for the American Workforce, by Richard B. Freeman of Harvard and Joseph R.

The U.S. Department of Labor held hearings on its proposed fiduciary regulations, which, among other things, would define ESOP appraisers as fiduciaries.

The 19th Gathering of the Games will be held May 4-6 in St. Louis. I have been to all 19, and this year I have the honor of keynoting the conference. I'll be speaking on what makes a great workplace and why so many companies don't even try to become one.

More than 430 graduate and undergraduate students from across the U.S.

According to a February 18 story on MarketWatch.com, employee participation in employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs) is rising.

The Fellowship program of the School of Labor and Management Relations at Rutgers University held its mid-year fellows workshop in honor of Louis O. Kelso. The workshop was funded by John Menke of Menke Associates.

In Notice 2011-19, "Definition of 'Readily Tradable' on an Established Security Market," the IRS has put into regulations the long-held assumption that companies are considered privately held unless their stock is readily tradable on an established security market.

A district court has added another possible line of defense for fiduciaries in stock-drop cases by agreeing with the defendants that, unless fiduciary decisions actually caused investment losses in employer stock, fiduciaries could not be held accountable for them. In Dann v.