On July 28, Congress passed the pension reform bill as approved by a House-Senate conference committee. If the bill is signed by the President, employee ownership plans will be affected in a number of ways, as outlined below.
The NCEO has now compiled new data on the prevalence of ESOPs, stock bonus plans, and related plans (plans that function in the same way as an ESOP but that technically do not file as an ESOP).
Then overwhelming conventional wisdom has been that options accounting rules would dampen the use of options for top executives. Maybe not, it turns out. According to a New York Times article (July 17, 2006), a new unpublished study by H.
According to a new study by Eric Lie and Randall Heron, 29.2% of companies issuing options to executives and/or directors between 1996 and 2002 have grant date patterns that suggest backdating or other manipulative practices (such as "spring-loading," the announcement of a grant before good news
On July 28, the House passed a pension reform bill approved by a House-Senate conference committee. If the bill is passed by the Senate, employee ownership plans will be affected in a number of ways, as outlined below.
According to the National Compensation Survey by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 8% of the work force (about 10 million employees) have "access" to stock options, defined as the right to buy stock at a fixed price for a fixed period of time.
After missing several self-imposed deadlines, conference committee leaders say that legislation to reform retirement plans might actually get reported back to the House and Senate for a final vote very soon.
We encourage employee ownership companies with between 50 and 999 employees to apply for the Great Place to Work Institute's "50 Best Small and Medium-Sized Companies to Work for in America" list. This is the same organization that puts out the "100 Best Companies" list.
The Employee-Owned S Corporations of America (ESCA) will be holding its annual meeting and fall lobby day September 20-21 in Washington, D.C. ESCA and the NCEO have partnered on a number of projects.
Previous installments of this column have reported on the backdating scandal, in which many companies are being scrutinized for grants of stock options that were either recorded as being granted at a prior date when the stock price was especially low ("backdating") or granted just before favorabl
An analysis by Credit Suisse of the 236 S&P 500 companies for which First Call included consensus analyst estimates of the impact of options expensing on share prices found that for most companies, the impact was small and short-lived, but for the 47 where it was "material" (causing a decline
