Employee Ownership Blog
Corey Rosen

Corey Rosen

What Will the Trump Administration Mean for ESOPs?

President-elect Donald Trump has not said anything we are aware of about employee ownership during his political career, so it is difficult to know what approach he will take to the issue. Many of his former advisors and other people with similar views were involved with Project 2025, however, although he and his campaign have distanced themselves from it. Project 2025's proposed 180-day transition playbook, Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise, states (pp. 610-11):

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Corey Rosen

Study Reveals Top Worker Outcomes: EO Models

A new study by the Brookings Institution and Washington University’s Olin Business School finds that employees are significantly more likely to remain working for their employer and to be satisfied with their jobs in companies that transition ownership through ESOPs and other employee ownership models compared to other business transition models. The study also recommends that Congress pass the Promotion and Expansion of Private Employee Ownership Act of 2023 and support efforts of private equity firms, such as those involved with Ownership Works, to include employee ownership in business transitions.

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Corey Rosen

New NCEO Paper on Private Equity and Employee Ownership

In the last several years, there has been a growing trend for private equity firms to include broad-based employee ownership programs in their transactions. This trend has gained national attention, with stories on 60 Minutes, Freakonomics, the New York Times, and many other news outlets. The new paper Private Equity and Employee Ownership (PDF; also see the embedded version below) by NCEO founder Corey Rosen looks at the history of private equity and employee ownership in the 1980s and the current wave of interest among some large private equity firms in sharing ownership with employees.

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Corey Rosen

NC, IN, GA, WI, MO Designate October as Employee Ownership Month

Governor Roy Cooper of North Carolina has declared October as employee ownership month. Among other things, Cooper said that “employee ownership drives the creation of wealth and helps to close the wealth gap for North Carolinians, as employee owners are shown to have more than twice the retirement savings as their peers and greater financial assets overall.”

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Corey Rosen

Harris/Walz Campaign Promises to Promote Employee Ownership

In a recent policy statement, the Harris/Walz campaign became the first presidential campaign to explicitly endorse employee ownership: "In addition, Vice President Harris and Governor Walz will reform our tax laws to make it easier for businesses to let workers share in their company’s success, including through broad-based employee stock ownership, profit-sharing plans, and comparable arrangements, with appropriate guardrails to ensure these plans benefit and protect workers."

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Corey Rosen

Six Percent of UK Business Transfers Are Now to Employee Ownership Trusts

In 2014, the United Kingdom passed a law providing a tax exemption for business owners selling to an employee ownership trust (EOT). An EOT is somewhat similar to a U.S. ESOP, but unlike an ESOP, with an EOT the employees do not have individual share accounts and do not have any claim on equity when they leave the company. Instead, the trust is meant to own the company in perpetuity on behalf of the employees, with the employees getting a dividend or profit share each year. New data confirm just how successful this tax incentive has been in encouraging transfers to EOTs in the UK. According to the European Federation of Employed Shareholders, 1,756 UK companies have been transferred to their 124,000 employees via EOTs as of July 2024. About 6% of UK business transfers so far in 2024 have been through EOTs, as the graph below shows.

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Corey Rosen

House DOL Budget Omits WORK Act Funding, Senate Backs ESOP Support

The 2026 proposed appropriation for the Department of Labor (DOL) passed by the House Appropriations Committee lacks funding for state employee ownership offices authorized by the WORK Act that the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended in July. That committee is recommending an initial $2 million for 2025 to help fund state employee ownership outreach programs. The Senate committee also urged the DOL to finalize its ESOP valuation regulations.

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