🇬🇧 Common Wealth in the Commonwealth
The ownership economy newsletter, Vol. 133
Welcome back! Top shelf news:
Common Trust released the newest version of its Employee Ownership Trust Playbook, with new case studies on Cypress Valley Meat Company, Guidon, and The Ready
Alden Global Capital, an infamous hedge fund, wants to buy the employee-owned Daily Herald
Employee Ownership Canada and other advocates are working to extend the Employee Ownership Trust capital gains tax incentive; send their petition to your favorite Canadians!
👉 In This Issue
🏙️ Events
For a full list of upcoming events, see our Events page. Share your conference recaps with us, too.
Coming up quick
Feb 17: EOF’s ESOP Accelerator one-day course in Rocky Mount, NC
Feb 18-20: ESCA’s Leadership Summit in St. Petersburg
Feb 19:
Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program’s Building New Narratives on Work and Opportunity in the US South, ft. TNCEO’s Rachel Eva Merfalen
Collective Action for Just Finance’s webinar on impact first funds, ft. Project Equity’s David Kenney
NCEO’s webinar on planning an ownership culture
Southwest Indiana SBDC’s ESOP 101 Webinar — Is Employee Ownership the Right Exit Strategy for Your Business?
Feb 24: North Carolina Employee Ownership Center’s NC Employee Ownership Ambassador Training Program
Feb 24: The ESOP Association’s webinar on leading an ESOP
Newly announced
Mar 11: LevelUp Coops’ How Ownership Actually Works in a Worker Co-op: A Hands-On Introduction to Ownership Design webinar
July 8-10: 2026 IAFEP Conference at the University of Mondragon University in Oñati, Spain
Job opportunities
PURPOSE LatAm is hiring a remote communications specialist in Colombia, Argentina, or Mexico
Mosaic Capital Partners is hiring an investment associate
Employee stock ownership plans
BostonbeaN Coffee Company is now 100% employee-owned. Congrats!
The ERISA Advisory Council that regulates ESOPs has quietly disappeared, writes Paul Mulholland
🎧 Journey to an ESOP podcast hosts Makenzie Wirth, and The Ownership Effect podcast hosts Brian Bowers from Bowers + Kubota Consulting, an ESOP
NCEO shares insights from two executives on how to navigate an ESOP transition
Representative Bill Foster shared his ESOP transition story at a House Financial Services Committee meeting
Worker cooperatives
The National Cooperative Business Association’s Doug O’Brien shares his remarks at the U.N. on why cooperatives are a preferred strategy for tackling inequality and advancing inclusive economic development
New data shows cooperatives are rapidly growing in the U.S., Karina Pacheco shares with Co-op News
From the left: Trebor Scholz argues that socialist-oriented co-ops provide a counterweight to concentrated platform power in Silicon Valley, and John Flores chronicles worker cooperatives’ participation in recent strikes and mutual aid efforts in Minneapolis
ICYMI: Last year John Abrams helped Platt Builders of Massachusetts become a worker cooperative
Purpose trusts + steward ownership
The Purpose Foundation team reflects on the recent sales of Threema and Vimeo and published a new case study on Haferkater, a steward-owned company
If you missed last week’s Philadelphia article on Kensington Corridor Trust, it’s worth a read. Roody Senatus from ImpactAlpha wrote about KCT this week, too (paywalled)
🎧 The New World in the Making podcast hosts Sandra Castañeda-Elena from Somos Stewards
Employee ownership + the ownership economy
🇨🇦 Canadian company Paradigm Transportation Solutions is now an employee ownership trust. Congrats all!
Radio Canada International explains why Canadian companies are turning their workers into owners instead of selling to U.S. companies
Natasha Goldstein shares a CTV News article that argues an EOT tax-incentive in Canada is a “no-brainer”
🇬🇧 In the UK, Mondaq questions whether EOTs are still worth considering as an exit strategy after recent budget changes. The UK’s Employee Share Ownership Centre also released its February employee ownership newsletter
🇦🇺 Employee Ownership Australia’s most recent webinar, Why is Australia missing out on the employee ownership success story?, features Graeme Nuttall
🏴 The Democracy Collaborative will host two sessions at Scotland’s Economics Festival, featuring Neil Mclnroy & Thomas Hanna; and the Scottish Parliament passed a Community Wealth Building Bill
In Impact Entrepreneur, Noelle St.Clair Lentz argues that employee ownership investing is reaching an inflection point as private equity, share plans, and economic democracy conversations converge
ICYMI: Check out Morehouse’s International Comparative Labor Studies’ Nov 2025 edition of its newsletter, The Collective
SOCAP released recordings of its the 2025 panels, including:
Justice & Economic Prosperity for All, moderated by Impact Alpha’s Roody Senatus
Investing in Economic and Political Power: Innovative Models for Change, moderated by Transform Finance’s Julie Menter:
📚 Academic updates
Kyoung Yong Kim and co-authors extended to March 15th the deadline for paper submissions to their forthcoming Research Handbook on Employee Ownership
Abstract submissions for the July 2026 International Association for the Economics of Participation (IAFEP) Conference at the University of Mondragon are due March 27th
Marie J Bouchard and Damien Rousselière published A Modern Guide to the Social and Solidarity Economy