Corey Rosen
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.
Corey Rosen
A new NCEO paper, The Impact of AI on ESOP Transactions and Administration (PDF; also see the embedded version below), looks at whether artificial intelligence (AI) will lower the costs of setting up and administering an ESOP. Generative AI is seen as a potentially transformative technology in part because it promises to reduce the time and expense needed for service-intensive projects. Selling a business to an ESOP is certainly service-intensive, and finding ways to make the process quicker, easier, and less costly would be a real boon for selling business owners.
Madelyn Hammack
As a lifelong denizen of the Midwest, I can personally attest to the rich culture of employee ownership in the area. From the J&R Schugel trucks I see along my drive into downtown Chicago to the Woodman’s Food Market in my very own backyard, it’s clear that employee ownership is thriving across the Heartland. Alongside the employee-owned companies themselves, the region is also home to several nonprofit organizations that are doing the necessary work to further the spread of employee ownership, such as the Illinois Center for Employee Ownership (ILCEO) and the Ohio Employee Ownership Center (OEOC). Through their events and resources, these organizations are ensuring that everyone from EO-curious business owners to employee-owners themselves can connect with peers and receive valuable education about employee ownership models.
Corey Rosen
The first piece of legislation I wrote on ESOPs as a Congressional staffer was the Small Business Employee Ownership Act. It became law in 1980. The bill was designed to address the SBA's refusal to make loans to ESOP trusts. At the time, loans often went directly to the ESOP trust rather than first to the company, which would then reloan it to the ESOP. The new law clarified that the SBA could make a loan directly to the ESOP trust. Shortly after that, I started the NCEO. After a couple of years, the SBA still had not issued guidance on how the law would be implemented. I set up a meeting with SBA officials to discuss the issue. They told me the law did not mean what I thought. I explained that I actually wrote the law, but they were not persuaded. The law also directed them to run an outreach program, but they didn't want to do that either.
John Case
Many employee-owned companies these days are experimenting with different forms of participative management, such as systematic suggestion procedures, quality circles, and self-managing teams. Most of these initiatives work well, but they’re limited in scope. Participants rarely address issues of business strategy or financial priorities. They don’t negotiate pay or benefits; indeed, allowing such discussions would expose the company to legal challenges under the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act.
Timothy Garbinsky
The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing named Dr. Adria Scharf as its new director, succeeding Dr. Bill Castellano as of July 1.
NCEO Events & Webinars
Mergers and acquisitions have become an increasingly common growth strategy for ESOP companies, and a recent NCEO webinar with Hillary Hughes and Will Hobby of Prairie Capital Advisors offered a timely look at one particular path: the ESOP to ESOP merger. Their session made clear that this strategy is gaining traction, with polling during the webinar showing that roughly two thirds of attendees have already seriously evaluated acquiring another company.
Corey Rosen
Employee ownership figures prominently in Time magazine’s brand-new list of America's Best Private Companies of 2026. Fourteen of the top 100 companies are employee-owned; 13 are partially or entirely ESOP-owned, and 1 company is partly owned through an employee ownership trust. The list includes 500 companies; we looked at the top 100. Time partnered with Statista to “evaluate and rank the most prominent firms in the country based on employee satisfaction, financial performance, and sustainability transparency. Both public companies and private companies that report their financial and sustainability data were considered.” Details on the methodology can be found here.
Corey Rosen
Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) added an amendment (PDF) to S. 3333, the Emergency Savings Enhancement Act of 2025, that would dramatically increase funding for the Employee Ownership Initiative in the US Department of Labor (DOL). The initiative is part of the WORK Act, which was incorporated into the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022. The WORK Act established the Employee Ownership Initiative in the DOL to serve as a clearinghouse for information on employee ownership and, more importantly, provide funding for state employee ownership outreach and education programs. While the WORK Act authorized funds for the program, they were never appropriated. In 2025, the DOL administratively set aside $2 million for the program.
