Corey Rosen
In 2024, Canada enacted legislation that exempts the first $10 million (Canadian) in gains from the sale of a business to a qualifying employee ownership trust (EOT). The exemption was set to be available only until the end of 2026. The government’s proposed 2026 budget would have eliminated the incentive, but after a campaign by supporters of the new law, the spring 2026 government budget update will make it permanent.
NCEO Events & Webinars
Most leaders of employee-owned companies spend considerable time managing financial, operational, and compliance risks. Digital assets, however, rarely receive the same level of structured oversight. In a recent NCEO webinar, Digital Asset Risk Management: Protecting Employee-Owned Companies, John Weller at SteadyRain made the case that this gap represents a meaningful and often underappreciated threat to long-term ownership value.
Corey Rosen
Norway's main sovereign wealth fund is the Government Pension Fund Global. The fund is managed by Norges Bank Investment Management, whose CEO Nicolai Tangen recently wrote on LinkedIn that “As evidence for employee share ownership continues to grow, companies face a choice. They can concentrate ownership narrowly, or they can use employee ownership as a strategic tool to improve returns and build more resilient companies. The financial case for the latter is compelling. This should be on every board’s agenda.” Tangen states that the fund has consistently voted its shares in favor of proposals for employee ownership plans.
Corey Rosen
A new report by Adria Scharf and Matt Mazewski of Rutgers and Oyindamola Ijewere of Wilmington University, Business Owner Perspectives on Selling to Employees: Insights from In-Depth Interviews (PDF), chronicles 24 stories of why business owners decided to sell to an employee ownership plan. While most sold to an ESOP, there are also examples of sales to worker cooperatives and employee ownership trusts. The 46-page report also describes how these plans work.
Corey Rosen
On April 14, the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) in the Department of Labor (DOL) laid out its new enforcement priorities in Field Assistance Bulletin 2026-01. The memo states that these priorities will be:
Maria Lianos
We've been doing this for 44 years, and 2026 just raised the bar.
For those who were with the NCEO in Milwaukee last week, thank you. For those who were not, here's a little bit more about the largest NCEO Annual Conference in history.
NCEO Events & Webinars
When HFA Enterprises converted to 100% employee ownership on Halloween 2022, it committed to a fundamentally different way of governing and running a company. In a recent NCEO webinar, Ryan Ray and Dave Wilgus of HFA joined NCEO board member and moderator Howard Kaplan to share what they've learned. Their story offers a practical look at what it takes to build governance that actually serves employee-owners.
NCEO Events & Webinars
Closing an ESOP transaction is a significant milestone, but it also begins a new set of obligations. In a recent NCEO webinar, Beyond the Close: What New ESOPs Need to Prepare for in Their First 90 Days, 6 Months, and One Year, Ken Sommers of PCE Investment Bankers walked through the practical realities that newly formed ESOPs face as they move from transaction to ongoing operation.
Corey Rosen
The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For® 2026 list compiled by the Great Place to Work Institute once again contains a number of companies that either have ESOPs or are directly 100% owned by most of their employees. One is 100% ESOP-owned, one is a 100% employee-owned mix of an ESOP and a stock purchase plan, three have minority ESOPs, and three are owned by stock purchase or partnership plans in which most employees participate.
