Employee Ownership Blog

In 2004, the Department of Labor closed 220 cases with ESOP violations, up from 187 in 2002. In October of this year, the Department launched a special investigation of ESOP abuses.

Cisco Systems has proposed issuing a special security that would mimic employee stock options as a way to create a market-based valuation of the awards. Cisco has presented the idea to the Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC Chair William Donaldson has expressed interest in the idea.

One of the most confusing and controversial aspects of the proposed rules for anti-abuse testing on S corporation ESOPs (Temporary and Proposed Treasury Regulation Section 1.409(p)-1 T) concerned the combination of the family attribution rules under existing tax law with the specific tests for fa

As reported in this column on May 10, a new NCEO survey shows that most companies are not, as has been widely predicted, about to terminate their employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs). Of 117 respondents, 26 companies will or might modify their plans.

The June issue of the Harvard Business Review (HBR) contains an article titled "Every Employee an Owner. Really" by Corey Rosen of the NCEO, business writer John Case, and Martin Staubus of the Beyster Institute.

In a just-completed NCEO survey of 117 companies, 66% said they will not discontinue their ESPPs in light of new accounting rules, while only 6.5% have decided to do so.

Although press attention to the matter has subsided, there are still dozens of lawsuits in various stages of development over company stock in 401(k) plans and ESOPs (mostly the former).

At the NCEO annual conference in April, keynote speaker Ed Lawler, the dean of organizational development scholars, said that he is particularly unenthused about "forced ranking" of employees, a practice made famous by Jack Welch at GE, where all employees had performance reviews and the bottom 1

In a new study by Olubunmi Faleye, Vikas Mehrotra, and Randall Morck of 225 public companies with broad employee ownership of 5% or more of a company's stock, the authors found that productivity, Tobin's Q (a ratio of the market value of a firm's securities to the replacement costs of its tangibl

The evidence remains mixed on whether companies really will cut back in any significant way on their employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs). In a recent survey of 46 public companies that filed new or amended ESPPs, Equilar, Inc.

This new book by NCEO director Corey Rosen, business writer John Case, and the Beyster Institute's Martin Staubus makes the case for the "equity model" of business: sharing ownership widely, getting employees involved in work-level decisions, and sharing financial measurements and goals with empl

The NCEO's 24th annual meeting is over, but a recording of most of the presentations lives on. You can order at: