Employee Ownership Blog

Corey Rosen

Why Selling to an ESOP Often Provides the Highest Financial Benefits

Most owners who sell to an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) are focused more on legacy and values than price. They have spent much of their lives building a great business and want to see the people who have helped build it carry it forward. Other owners, however, want to consider all their options and may be concerned that selling to an ESOP means giving up significant value. They may have heard that selling to an ESOP means giving up some of what they could get by selling to another buyer. A new NCEO paper coauthored by NCEO founder Corey Rosen and by Regina Carls and Eric Zaiman of J.P. Morgan, How Proceeds from ESOP Sales Compare to Those from Other Buyers (PDF; also see the embedded version below), shows that selling to an ESOP can often match or exceed the financial benefits from selling to another buyer.

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Corey Rosen

Second Annual Stout ESOP Index Shows Large ESOP Companies Continue to Outperform the Market

In the only study of its kind, the Stout ESOP Index, the global advisory firm Stout found that between 2021 and 2025, the average annual share price growth in its index of private ESOP companies substantially outperformed the S&P 500 index and the broader Russell 2000 index. The study was originally released in late 2025, covering 2021 through 2024, and has now been released in its second annual version, covering 2021 through 2025. 

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Nancy Wiefek

New Research from Rutgers Shows an Advantage for Blue-Collar ESOP Workers

A new study from the Rutgers University Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing on behalf of Employee-Owned S Corporations of America (ESCA) finds that workers without bachelor's degrees who report working in jobs with employee stock ownership plans have higher earnings, greater access to employer-provided benefits, and higher household wealth than workers in non-ESOP jobs. You can read the full report here.

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Timothy Garbinsky

Employee Ownership Made Retirement Real for This Employee-Owner

We at the NCEO love to lift up the voices of working people whose lives have been transformed by the power of employee ownership. In celebration of Labor Day earlier this month, we received a piece from employee-owner Jaime Garcia of ESOP-owned Santini Foods in San Lorenzo, California, courtesy of the nonprofit Expanding ESOPs.

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Corey Rosen

Report on NCEO's Task Force on ESOP Valuation and the Repurchase Obligation

The NCEO recently convened a task force of trustees to issue a report on the current situation regarding valuation and the ESOP repurchase obligation. We have now released the Report of the NCEO Task Force on ESOP Valuation and the Repurchase Obligation (PDF; also see the embedded version below), which discusses the basic problem, governing authority, common approaches, ESOP valuation basics, specific issues, and recommendations for companies.

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Corey Rosen

Why Increasing Your ESOP Contribution Level Might Actually Save You Money in the Long Run

It is common in mature ESOP companies, especially those whose stock has been performing well, to try to create a steady and sustainable contribution level to the ESOP trust. Intuitively, the argument for doing this seems obvious. If the contribution level is too high, it seems that it would make funding the plan over time much less affordable. While that can be true in some situations, a recent presentation at the NCEO’s Forum, “Busting the Benefit Level Myth: What Too High Really Means for Your ESOP,” made a convincing case that sometimes a higher contribution level may result in a lower long-term cost for maintaining the ESOP.

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Corey Rosen

ESOP Pioneer Norm Kurland Dies

Norm Kurland, one of the earliest advocates for ESOPs, has passed away. Born in 1930, Mr. Kurland received his law degree from the University of Chicago. His early career included being director of planning of the Citizens Crusade Against Poverty, a national coalition headed by United Auto Workers president Walter Reuther. Before that, Mr. Kurland, as a federal government lawyer, became deeply involved as a civil rights investigator.

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