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Under ERISA, the ESOP trust is the legal owner of the shares in an ESOP. The trustee votes these shares, usually at its discretion but occasionally at the direction of plan participants. That includes voting for the board.

When Dr. Randy Spencer met with his leadership team in 2018 and presented the idea of selling his 24-hour emergency, specialty and primary care clinics, 1st Pet Veterinary Centers, to an ESOP and its 300 employees, he was not lacking in potential buyers for the company.

In 2018, Folience, a 100% ESOP-owned holding company based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, bought Cimarron Trailers, a manufacturer of high-end custom horse and livestock trailers in Chickasha, Oklahoma.

“Ok, everybody, please take a breath. Yes, Clown Shoes has been acquired by Harpoon.

Driven by engaged, entrepreneurial employees, employee-owned companies often emerge as industry leaders, pioneering best practices in a range of areas.

Paducah Bank and Trust, based in Paducah, Kentucky, has made employee ownership a core concept in how the company is run. The bank is mostly family owned and operates as an S corporation. It has six locations and 168 employees.

Early this year, several employee-owners from ProAct visited another ESOP company, Restek Corporation, as part of an ongoing series of visits to employee-owned companies in an effort to learn from companies further along on their ownership culture journey and form relationships and connections that can serve both companies into the future. In fact, just a week after their visit at Restek, ProAct employee-owners Kate Johnson, Dani Green, and Kayse Diamond had already set up a call with their own HR team internally to discuss the insights they learned about with regard to Restek's onboarding strategy the week prior.

I know I’m mortal. So I started exploring my exit options in 1990, only seven years after I bought the company from its founder, JW McKinney.

One of the most contested and significant ESOP lawsuits in recent years was Perez v. GreatBanc Trust, which resulted in a $5.25 million settlement over the handling of the ESOP at Sierra Aluminum. This article gives some overlooked background about Sierra Aluminum's ESOP. 

Every mighty live oak tree you’ve ever seen started out as a tiny acorn hundreds of years ago. It didn’t take The Greenery centuries to grow from a humble Hilton Head Island–based landscaping firm to a successful employee-owned company in the Southeast. Rather, it has taken us only 50 years.