The John Lewis Partnership, an iconic British retailer, is considering outside investors for the first time, a move that would dilute its 100% ownership through an employee ownership trust.
Woolworth's, the 30,000-employee retail chain in the United Kingdom, is facing severe financial difficulty and is now in the British equivalent of Chapter 11.
A new study of British companies by Martin Conyon at Wharton and Richard Freeman at Harvard shows that companies with stock option plans and profit sharing improved their performance over a four-year study period.
Somehow, we passed the first 10 years of the 21st century without ever agreeing on what to call them (the "oughts" never caught on). Maybe a lot of people would just as soon forget them. Certainly, there were a lot of challenges for employee ownership.
Surveys and conventional wisdom have suggested that the coming of the new equity compensation accounting rules would quickly lead many companies with broad-based equity plans to eliminate them or cut back on them sharply.
It's become commonplace for observers to predict that the rage for broad-based stock option plans that started in the 1990s will yield to pressure from the declining stock market and the general unease over employee ownership caused by the Enron fallout.
It’s that time of year again! This December, you can support employee-owned businesses while crossing items off your wish list by shopping with our NCEO Gift Guide.
