Loren Rodgers
As I talk with members, the word that keeps coming to mind is “resilience.” Some of you reading this are facing terrible choices and no-win situations. Some of you are seeing trouble approaching. But all of the people I have talked with these last weeks – company leaders, employee-owners, advisers, members of the NCEO board, people in our allied organizations – are putting in the hours to create solutions and share them.
Loren Rodgers
The NCEO is hosting three webinars, open to the general public, this week on the coronavirus outbreak and its relationship to employee ownership. You can register for future webinars on Free Webinars: ESOP Issues During the Coronavirus, which will also be updated with follow-up information and recordings of the webinars.
NCEO
Title 1 of the CARES Act directs the U.S. Small Business Administration to make certain loans to qualifying small businesses to cover payroll, costs related to continuing group health care benefits, salaries or commissions, payment of interest on any mortgage obligation, rent, utilities, and debt obligations incurred before the covered period. Generally, the law applies to companies with 500 or fewer employees, with some exceptions, most notably for multi-location restaurants and hospitality companies and for larger companies that meet the SBA size standards anyway. ESOP companies can apply for this assistance, and some of the normal barriers that they might face have been removed.
Corey Rosen
Jack Stack, the CEO of SRC Holdings, a 100% ESOP-owned company and creator of the Great Game of Business, is holding a free Q&A on responding to the coronavirus. It will be held Friday, March 20, at 11:00 CT. Stack will be looking at issues such as:
Loren Rodgers
We at the NCEO have always seen ourselves as your partners. We exist to make employee ownership thrive, and that mission determines what we do: serve the needs of you who are reading this.
Corey Rosen
Thirty-nine years ago, we held our first annual conference. We had 175 attendees, including my uncle Bernie. Last year we sold out at over 1,900; this year, we were on track to sell out even sooner at over 2,000. The conference is one of the most important ways we help make employee ownership grow and thrive. It is also over one-third of our annual revenue and provides most of the profit we use to support all the other work we do, such as research and outreach, that is essential to employee ownership but does not generate revenue. We devote approximately the equivalent of three full-time staff people per year to the event. I know many of you really look forward to the conference every year, just as I do. One of my favorite spring rituals is checking in each day on how many new registrations we are getting and looking forward to reconnecting with all the inspiring people I have gotten to know over the years, as well as meeting so many new ones. I come back reenergized for another year, and it is part of why I count my ongoing role as a pretty much full-time volunteer for the NCEO as an extraordinary blessing.
Loren Rodgers
Update on March 16: Please read our revised coronavirus update and see the announcement on our conference website.
Corey Rosen
A new process agreement between the Department of Labor and Farmers National Bank (FNB) was made public on February 28. It lays out a much more detailed process for evaluating whether an ESOP actually has and can pay for control. It also prevents FNB from accepting indemnification and sets new hurdles for the advancement of fees in legal cases. The agreement was included in a settlement in the case of Scalia v. The Farmers National Bank of Danville and Weddle Bros. Construction Company, No. 1:20-cv-674 (S.D. Ind. Feb 28, 2020). Process agreements apply only to the parties involved, but they may indicate how the DOL would proceed in other actions. While much of the agreement reiterates prior agreements, this new one lays out some potentially troubling issues.
Loren Rodgers
On February 29, Milan Havel joined the staff of the NCEO as our controller.
