I recently returned from the Oxford Symposium on Employee Ownership, where I was one of 120 hand selected attendees. I joined fellow Colorado Employee Ownership Commissioners, Doug Dell, Jen Briggs and Stephanie Gripne as one of the largest delegations from around the world.  We gathered in hallowed halls of Oxford University to discuss the current state, obstacles and opportunities for employee ownership in the U.K., The United States, Canada, Slovenia and around the world.  Common themes surfaced:

• The state of legal development varies greatly between countries, and there is no uniform approach, whether through ESOP laws, Employee Ownership Trusts laws (U.K. and Canada), cooperatives (such as Italy and Slovenia…not to mention the United States), and hybrid models (such as Canada).
• The legal framework for employee ownership in one country cannot be immediately viewed as a model for another country, given the differences in legal tradition, underlying policy and tax frameworks, and the local cultural contexts (e.g. African and S. Asian countries are more amenable to cooperatives than to larger scale ESOP or EOT structures, which have less familiar legal structures).
• Seller financing remains the dominant default norm for most transactions outside of the U.S. This poses a substantial risk as aging business owners often reject long-term payouts when self-financed. The U.S. has one of the more mature third-party financing capital markets.
• There is a global lack of awareness of employee ownership as the elegant, progressive and synergistic solution for the “silver tsunami” washing ashore around the world. More needs to be done to promote and raise awareness of employee ownership not only with business owners and business leagues, but with advisors and professionals.

The Symposium made a strategic decision not to focus on cooperatives due to their representation by other communities. I view this as a strategic error, one that omits the common experience and the synergies between all forms of employee ownership.  This approach left delegates with the belief that employee ownership in the U.S. is either by ESOP or EOT, which is far from my experience.  EOTs lack the legal foundation they enjoy in the U.K., and now in Canada, and so for most employee ownership conversions that are too small for ESOPs, worker cooperatives or worker cooperative holding companies remain a viable option.

If you or someone you know is exploring employee ownership, contact us to discuss your options.