Employee Ownership Blog

The NCEO's board excellence toolkit and candidate directory launched on September 23, 2021, during the Fall ESOP Forum.

Next month, the NCEO will launch a brand-new program for ESOP companies to administer Ownership Culture Surveys to employee-owners while collaborating and networking with fellow employee-owned companies in the process.

The NCEO has put together an online training and networking program for companies, new and old, that want to create employee involvement and help their employees understand what their ESOP really means to their company, to employees, and to their families in the long run. This summer we will host our next series of the NCEO's Communications Committee Crash Course.

Long-time ESOP-owned company Clif Bar is running a one-minute advertisement during the 2021 World Series that prominently features Clif Bar's employee-owners showing pride in their product and their company, and introducing themselves and their coworkers as employee-owners.

We just released this year's EO 100, our annual list of the largest 100 companies that are owned by an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) or similar plan or, less commonly, where a majority of the employees directly own a majority of the shares.

The Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations has opened applications for the J. Robert Beyster Fellowship, the Louis O. Kelso Fellowship, and other fellowships for the study of employee share ownership and profit sharing in the U.S. and internationally.

The NCEO’s 2021 Fall Forum broke new records once again this year with more than 700 people joining us virtually from across the country and world.

We gave our annual Achievement Award to Calibre, whose video won for its creativity, humor, and energy. Bridges Health was the runner-up, with an energetic and inclusive video.

A potentially major improvement in rules for ESOP defense contractors was included in the Senate Armed Services Committee’s markup of the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA, S 2042). An amendment from Sen. Jean Shaheen (D-NH) would provide that the Department of Defense should create a pilot program that would allow companies that are or become 100% ESOP-owned to receive noncompete follow-on contracts for the work, even if they no longer meet applicable small business or other set-aside requirements.

In Walsh v. Bowers, No. 1:18-cv-00155-SOM-WRP (D.C. Hawaii, September 17, 2021), a district court decisively ruled in favor of the trustee and the board of directors of the ESOP company Bowers+Kubota in an ESOP valuation case.

The NCEO recently published a table that highlights the main characteristics of four types of employee ownership, found in our web article Employee Ownership for Closely Held Companies: ESOPs vs. Equity Grants, Trusts, and Worker Cooperatives.

The House Budget Committee has approved a $500 million pilot program as part of its final markup of a $25 billion bill for the Small Business Administration (SBA).