Employee Ownership Blog

Some outside trustees do not want board members to see the full valuation report. Their concern generally is that board members might be tempted to intervene in the appraisal. But ESOP boards are responsible for monitoring the trustee to make sure that the appraisal process is properly handled.

In Having a Stake, a publication released today by Third Way, Joseph Blasi, Douglas Kruse, and Richard Freeman assemble

PFSbrands is a Missouri-based company with 120 employees that supplies hot food programs to convenience and grocery stores nationally. Shawn and Julie Burcham were the company's shareholders.

In Interpretive Bulletin 2016-1 (PDF), the Department of Labor issued new guidance for fiduciaries of retirement plans that have company stock as one of their investments.

In a report titled Down Home Capital, Patrick McHugh examines the current status and policy alternatives for North Carolina to minimize the disruption caused by the impendin

Neil Gorsuch, currently a member of the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals, has been involved in over 20 cases involving ERISA over the past ten years.

The ESOP Association of Canada will host its 2017 conference in Gatineau/Ottawa in June.

In a January 21 article, Seattle Times journalist George Erb describes the newly employee-owned company Charter Construction and several other Washington-based companies.

On January 9, the Supreme Court invited the solicitor general to file a brief in a case regarding ESOPs, indicating the Court's interest in hearing the case. The case concerns whether ERISA permits courts to order one fiduciary to indemnify another. In the case, Fenkell v.

Andrew Puzder, who is nominated to be Secretary of Labor in the Trump Administration, "has left employee benefits practitioners scratching their heads about what to expect from the DOL's Employee Benefits Security Administration" in the words of Sean Forbes, a reporter for Bloomberg BNA.

Judge James C. Cacheris of the Eastern District of Virginia refused to dismiss a case on January 10, in a case alleging that the trustee of an ESOP exercised his governance power to protect his own employment rather than in the interest of plan participants.

ESOP company boards have a fiduciary obligation to monitor the ESOP trustee to make sure that the trustee is properly assessing the valuation process. That raises a number of questions. Should the board read the valuation report?