Employee Ownership Blog

In "Why Executive Pay is Failing" in the June 2006 issue of the Harvard Business Review, NCEO member Stephen O'Byrne of Shareholder Advisor Services and S. David Young, an accounting professor in France and Singapore, present a new take on problems with pay at the top.

Dozens of companies are being scrutinized for improper grants of stock options.

Despite repeated promises that an agreement would soon be reached, the conference committee considering pension reform has still been unable to find common ground.

On June 8, the staff of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued clarifications on the accounting treatment of the modification of an equity instrument in conjunction with a financial restructuring.

Back in 1973, James O'Toole and Edward Lawler (a recent NCEO/Beyster Institute keynote speaker) wrote the groundbreaking study Work in America. Among other things, the study urged the expansion of the then-nascent trend towards employee involvement programs.

Dozens of companies may be under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for backdating stock options. The Manhattan U.S. District Attorney's Office has also issued several subpoenas in launching a criminal probe.

Employee ownership companies are often great places to work and deserve to be so recognized.

William Taylor, a founding editor of Fast Company, wrote a very laudatory article in the May 21 issue of the New York Times business

The Business Ethics 100 list--a list of the top 100 corporate citizens in 2006--is dominated by companies with some kind of broad-based ownership plan. The number one company is Green Mountain Coffee, which has an ESOP and a variety of other ownership opportunities.

Dozens of companies are under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission for backdating stock options. The Manhattan U.S. District Attorney's Office has also issued several subpoenas in launching a criminal probe.

On April 25, Virginia Smith of the U.S. Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration told a meeting of the American Society of Pension Plan Actuaries that ESOP violations were one of five high-priority DOL enforcement projects.

A February 2006 survey of 90 high-tech companies by Culpepper & Associates shows that 38% of the companies are cutting back on who is eligible for equity-based pay, 3% are expanding eligibility to lower levels, and 59% are keeping their existing penetration.