Employee Ownership Blog

During the 2019 Employee Ownership Conference, 15 CEOs convened in a conference room (imagine that!) in the Pittsburgh Convention Center for an interest meeting that spawned the first cohort of the ESOP CEO Network.

The ESOP Finance Working Group started as a small group of members that met at the 2021 Employee Ownership Conference.

Sandy Kostouros’ (Morton Buildings) 2021 NCEO Annual Conference presentation inspired Lori Atone (TFV) to ask the NCEO to establish a creative coalition for employee-owners to collaborate on usable, replicable ideas and

This gift-giving season, the NCEO has put together another group of ESOP company members offering a variety of gift options.

Making employee ownership thrive includes increasing the number of employee-owners. As part of our mission, we produce events and disseminate information about establishing ESOPs to businesses across the U.S. We are announcing "Who Should Own Your Business After You?," a feasibility meeting series.

The NCEO now has three documents for use when working with state legislators on prospective legislation to help move employee ownership forward.

In December we will host the next series of our Communications Committee Crash Course, an online training and networking program for companies that want to create employee involvement and help their employees understand what their ESOP really means to their company, to employees, and to their families in the long run.

Register for the NCEO's first ever Ownership Culture Survey Networking program by December 3rd.

The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing is the academic home for the largest collection of scholars on employee ownership.

The IRS has announced COLA (cost of living adjustment) changes for 2022 retirement plan limits, with several changes of interest to ESOPs.

https://www.cdfa.net/p/SSBCI.htmlThe American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 included an appropriation of $10 billion for another round of funding for the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI), a program that has been in place since 2010. SSBCI funds might make it easier for lenders to ESOPs to provide larger and less collateralized ESOP loans or for mezzanine lenders to loan at lower rates.

A new NCEO analysis of ESOP litigation in closely held companies over the last 10 years shows that of 74 lawsuits involving trustees, 54 were for issues dealing with a transaction. The data suggest that the risks of being a trustee in an ESOP with a high-quality team of advisors and a good third-party administrator are extremely low.