South Africa: Employee Ownership Distributions

The Clicks Group, an 8,000-employee South Africa-based retailer of health and wellness products across Africa, has announced that employees will receive a payout of $1.3 billion rand ($110 million dollars) as the first of one of two installment distributions of their employee stock ownership plan. That is the equivalent of one year's pay for most workers. Clicks stock has quadrupled since the ESOP was initiated four years ago. You can see the full story online, with videos of the celebration. South Africa does not have legislation similar to U.S. ESOPs, but there are some government incentives for companies to set up plans, often via a trust for all employees.