Employee Ownership Blog

The 2014 Domestic Stock Plan Administration Survey, sponsored by the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals (NASPP) and Deloitte, contains data on how public companies are operating employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs). The study includes responses from 487 companies.

The Encouraging Employee Ownership Act would increase the current $5 million cap on the amount of stock closely held companies can award employees before triggering certain SEC reporting requirements to $20 million.

The Australian government has provided details on new legislation to encourage companies to offer discounted share plans to employees. To qualify, companies must make the plan available to at least 75% of their employees.

Now that people are filing tax returns, the new 1099-B reporting requirements may cause confusion and sometimes overpayment of taxes for recipients of equity awards, including participants in ESPPs.

Does your company talk about employee ownership?

Although Japan has long been a pioneer in employee engagement and decentralized process management, it has not had a significant number of employee-owned businesses.

The staff of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo proposed that the newspaper become a worker cooperative, partly in order to give its entire staff a voice in how the newspaper uses the substantial profits it has earned from the spike in sales following the attacks on its office on Januar

On February 26, 2015 New York City Council passed legislation requiring annual reports on the amount of goods and services the city purchases from worker-controlled businesses and aiming to reduce barriers for worker cooperatives to participate in city procurement.

Thank you to the many companies who have already filled out the first-ever ESOP transaction survey. Company responses help us answer questions no one has been able to answer before, such as:

The best-known project to support the development of worker cooperatives as a way to rejuvenate disadvantaged neighborhoods is the Evergreen cooperative project.

The ESOP Association Canada is hosting its first conference June 3 to 5, 2015, in Winnipeg.

How many ESOPs cost more than $200,000 to establish? How many transactions involve seller financing and warrants? How many professionals and what types do companies typically engage?