Employee Ownership Blog

Based on data from the Department of Labor and the IRS, the NCEO estimates that in 2006 that the number of ESOPs and stock bonus plans grew by approximately 5% over the 2005 numbers. Plan assets grew to approximately $675 billion, up about 12% from the prior year.

A new survey of 291 U.S.-Based multinational companies that offer equity compensation to their non-U.S. employees shows that 30% of the respondents make all employees eligible for stock options or stock appreciation rights (SARs) awards while 62% offer employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs).

An online survey of 2,373 U.S.

In the past five years, ESOP terminations are running about one-third below their rate in the 1990s. While it is too early to tell if this represents a long-term trend, it also semes unlikely simply to be a statistical fluke.

The collapse of a section of freeway in the San Francisco area in April made national news. The state of California contracted with employee-owned C.C. Myers, Inc. to repair the critical road, offering bonuses if the project was finished early.

On May 8, Zions Bancorporation successfully completed its auction of Employee Stock Option Appreciation Rights Securities (ESOARS). ESOARS are traded securities meant to track the value of employee stock options the bank has issued. Employees had received options at a strike price of $83.25.

A new analysis by the NCEO shows that of the ESOPs set up in the 1970s, about 20% still survive today, while about 40% of those set up in the 1980s do, and more than half of the ESOPs established in the 1990s still exist.

The conventional wisdom holds that employee turnover has grown over recent decades. Whereas employees often sought and got lifetime jobs in the past, this wisdom holds, now they tend to move around much more.

In the last issue of the newsletter, our math was wrong in the example of how to diversify in an ESOP. In the second bullet point in the example, the text should read "So now the calculation is 25% of 1,100 shares, or 275 shares eligible to be diversified.

Through June 30, the NCEO is offering members access to an eight-item questionnaire assessing employee attitudes toward ESOPs that their employees can fill out online.

Jack Stack has arguably been the most influential employee ownership company executive of the past 30 years.

A new survey from Watson Wyatt Worldwide found that the value of stock options (based on the Black-Scholes formula) dropped 71% between 2001 (its peak) and 2005, falling from $137 billion to $40 billion. The value of options declined 32% just from 2004 to 2005.