Employee Ownership Blog
Corey Rosen

Corey Rosen

Norway wealth fund CEO backs employee ownership for growth

Norway's main sovereign wealth fund is the Government Pension Fund Global. The fund is managed by Norges Bank Investment Management, whose CEO Nicolai Tangen recently wrote on LinkedIn that “As evidence for employee share ownership continues to grow, companies face a choice. They can concentrate ownership narrowly, or they can use employee ownership as a strategic tool to improve returns and build more resilient companies. The financial case for the latter is compelling. This should be on every board’s agenda.” Tangen states that the fund has consistently voted its shares in favor of proposals for employee ownership plans. 

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Corey Rosen

New Report on Business Owner Perspectives on Selling to Employees

A new report by Adria Scharf and Matt Mazewski of Rutgers and Oyindamola Ijewere of Wilmington University, Business Owner Perspectives on Selling to Employees: Insights from In-Depth Interviews (PDF), chronicles 24 stories of why business owners decided to sell to an employee ownership plan. While most sold to an ESOP, there are also examples of sales to worker cooperatives and employee ownership trusts. The 46-page report also describes how these plans work. 

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Corey Rosen

New DOL Guidance Suggests Lighter Hand on ESOP Litigation

On April 14, the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) in the Department of Labor (DOL) laid out its new enforcement priorities in Field Assistance Bulletin 2026-01. The memo states that these priorities will be:

  • Focusing enforcement on the most egregious conduct and significant harm;
  • Ensuring, whenever possible and consistent with the EBSA's mission, that the EBSA does not regulate by enforcement and instead promotes fairness, prior notice, and clarity to the regulated community;
  • Requiring proper review by senior agency officials of all critical enforcement initiatives; and
  • Committing to timely and responsive enforcement.

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Corey Rosen

Employee Ownership Stands Out in Great Place to Work's 100 Best Companies

The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® 2026 list compiled by the Great Place to Work Institute once again contains a number of companies that either have ESOPs or are directly 100% owned by most of their employees. One is 100% ESOP-owned, one is a 100% employee-owned mix of an ESOP and a stock purchase plan, three have minority ESOPs, and three are owned by stock purchase or partnership plans in which most employees participate.

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Corey Rosen

Judge Rules Releveraging an ESOP Is Not a Fiduciary Violation

Many mature ESOP companies use releveraging to help manage their repurchase obligations and ensure there are shares to allocate to new participants over time. Releveraging especially helps manage repurchase costs when the company’s share price increases quickly. In releveraging, ESOP companies borrow money to purchase shares, typically from former employees, and then allocate those shares over the life of the loan. This new debt can have a temporary impact on share value. Part of that impact is offset by the additional shares allocated to existing participants, but many companies create a floor price plan that protects at least more senior employees from a reduction in their stock value as a result of the additional debt.

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Corey Rosen

New Opinion Poll Shows Broad Support for Employee Ownership

But the poll also found that few people know much about the idea

A new poll from Expanding ESOPs shows that a large majority of Americans support the idea of employee ownership, while very few oppose it. Support is slightly higher among Democrats than Republicans. Working with the Bipartisan Policy Coalition (BPC), Expanding ESOPs hired polling firms (Public Opinion Strategies and Impact Research) to poll 1,000 registered voters. 

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Corey Rosen

New NCEO Paper Looks at How ESOP Companies Share Profits with Employees

Employees in companies with ESOPs share the rewards of work through ownership, but many ESOP companies also share some of their annual profits with employees. My new paper "How ESOP Companies Share Profits with Employees," found in the Culture and Communications section of our Document Library (NCEO member login required), explores the many approaches ESOP companies use to do this.

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Corey Rosen

Bipartisan Policy Council Report Urges More Support for Employee Ownership

In the new report A Nation at Risk to A Nation at Work: The Case for a National Talent Strategy, the Bipartisan Policy Council urges Congress and the administration to improve incentives for employee ownership. Founded in 2007, the council holds meetings and issues reports on a wide variety of topics. Its current co-chairs are former Massachusetts Democratic governor Deval Patrick and former Tennessee governor Bill Haslam. The Council includes a variety of prominent former political leaders as well as thought leaders. 

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