Top 10 Employee Ownership Stories of 2007

It's purely unscientific, but here is what I saw as the top 10 developments of the year:

1. The percentage of employees in broad-based plans dropped, but not by much. Thirty-five percent of employees working for stock corporations own stock or equity rights in their employer, down from 38.5% in 2002. The decline came from employees with stock options, with the percentage falling from 13.1% to 9.3%.
2. The number of ESOP companies and employment at these companies grew by about 5% in 2006, with assets now at $675 billion.
3. An ESOP bought the Tribune Company, but private equity forms ignored the model.
4. France, Germany, and Austria all started serious consideration of legislation to promote much wider employee ownership.
5. Backdaters went to jail, but in the end, only a relative handful of companies and individuals faced prosecution or derivative shareholder suits.
6. Google issued marketable options. The structure is innovative but has not yet been copied. Google's growth and continued commitment to broad employee ownership, however, helped preserve the idea in tech companies generally.
7. Our "Employee Ownership 100" list again was topped by Publix Supermarkets; the top 100 companies now employ almost 600,000 people.
8. An Employee Ownership Foundation/NCEO study found that ESOPs are terminated mostly because of attractive offers, and much less commonly because of difficulties with repurchase obligations.
9. "Stock drop" lawsuits continued, with about $1.8 billion in settlements so far, but most employees will only get several hundred dollars each.
10. The "top companies" lists are still dominated by employee ownership companies. Most of the companies on the Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work for in America® list had some kind of broad employee ownership; 5 of the 15 winners of the Winning Workplace award were majority employee-owned (and others are likely to set up plans soon).