👋 Welcome back! From Colin:
A study from Jonathan Preminger and Guy Major of Cardiff University shows UK EOT conversions are down in 2026 compared to previous years, and the decline is substantial — 627 conversions in 2024, down to 570 last year, and just 208 so far in 2026. The authors project that number will settle around 270 by year end.
A common refrain is that EO transitions are rarely motivated by pure economic interest. Owners transitioning to EO would like to avoid taking a haircut, of course, but are often more focused on protecting jobs, maintaining firm independence, rewarding employees, and protecting their business legacy.
Still, Preminger and Major can’t help but notice that the decline in EOT conversions coincides with changes to UK tax policies that reduce the tax benefits of EOT conversions and make them more complex, even if EOT tax advantges “remain attractive” .
The study reminds us that nothing happens in a vacuum — policy changes interact with broader economic, social, and demographic tends to influence onwers’ decisions to transition to EO.
🥃 Top Shelf News
The Wall Street Journal reports on Anthropic’s five-person trust ahead of the IPO (paywalled; ht Loren Rogers)
The incentive structures of business schools come under fire this week, and this particular critic thinks there should be more focus on collective ownership in business education. Dang, what an novel idea… it sure would be cool to have a gigantic repository of resources for that exact thing
👉 In This Issue
If you’re new here, friend, welcome! You may want to start with Stories & Dealflow.
Events and Opportunities
News
Stories & Dealflow
Research and Insights
🏙️ Events and Opportunities
Events This Week
Oct 26: Day one of ESCA’s Pacific Regional Policy Seminar in Coronado, CA | Sky Blue Builders’ Book Talk: What People’s Capitalism Could Mean for Denver in…well, Denver | GEO Journal Release Party (quarterly theme: Union Worker Co-Ops)
Oct 27: Innovative Finance Initiative’s Training Day in Amsterdam | Rocky Mountain Farmers Union: Best Practices in Indigenous Communities with Trillium Cooperative
Oct 28: TXCEO’s Austin Courts & Floors Chooses EO to Preserve Legacy | Info Sessions: 2027 Reclaim the Economy Week
Oct 29: Aspen Institute EOP’s What Employee Ownership Means to Workers | OEOC’s Building a Financial Forecast You’ll Actually Use | NCEO’s Navigating Tricky ESOP Distributions | Somos Stewards hosts Financiación Orientada al Propósito
Nov 1: Day one of The ESOP Association’s Employee Owned 26 in Las Vegas
For even more events, see our main Events page.
Opportunities
Spring Point Partners | Impact Investments MBA Internship, Summer 2027
Oct 28 Deadline: Rutgers fellow Andres Cuadros-Menaca invites employee ownership and ESOP researchers to participate in the Annual Midwest Economics Association Meeting, April 2-4, 2027. Send paper title and brief abstract to andres.cuadros@uni.edu
Dec 11 Deadline: NY Small Business Funders Collective opens grant applications for Successful Succession
For more jobs, including at employee-owned companies, visit our Jobs page.
🗞️ Ownership News
Employee Ownership
TNCEO launches Tennessee Employee Ownership Business Assistance Program for businesses to explore ESOPs as succession strategies, joining MI, NJ, PA and CO in funding feasibility studies for employee ownership
Seed Commons announces five new member orgs in CA, NE and PA
The ESOP Association launched their Professional Marketplace where owners, companies and ESOP professionals can find advisors and build their own profiles
Frothy trend: The alcoholic beverage industry imbibes in employee ownership (ht Kellogg College, Oxford)
NCEO recaps the 2026 Repurchase Obligation Workshop with Chartwell Financial
ESOP Case Law: In Bolton v. Inland Fresh Seafood, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling requiring ESOP participants to exhaust all administrative avenues before filing fiduciary claims under ERISA
Cooperative Development Foundation is awarded $950K Rural Cooperative Development Grant from USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture
🇬🇧 Once you’re done looking at our Events page, check out eoa’s Member Organised Events
Forbes’ Aparna Rae delves into the strategic partnership between Molina Niño of Known Holdings and Lauren Grattan of Mission Driven Finance
Ownership on Purpose
May 12-14: PTON announces 2027 Purpose Trust Ownership Conference dates in Portland, OR
The Ownership Economy
Worth Watching: One Project is developing funding vehicles designed to give communities more ownership in building economic democracies
Stories & Dealflow
Employee Ownership
📺 ALCEO produces Safe Landing: The Story of Employee Ownership in Huntsville
📺 ICYMI: The Walker Group hosts Beyond the Traditional Sale: Real Owner Stories on Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) & Perpetual Purpose Trust (PPT)
📺 CurrentShift Legal’s Jason Wiener gets the story of how and why Music Box Supper Club became Ohio’s first EOT from owner Mike Miller
🎙️ Empowered Ventures drops a new episode featuring Troy Osborn with ESOP Paramount Plastics (IN) and his evolving experience as an employee-owner
First Jet Airways launches crowdfunding campaign to develop a community-owned airline
ESCA spotlights Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories (SEL)
Darren Gleeman examines questions of employee ownership and legacy in the cannabis industry (ht ICA Group)
Common Trust checks in with seven companies who recently converted to EOTs
The Ownership Economy
Selçuk Balamir shares the story of a Dutch apartment building designed for inclusivity, affordability and “private sufficiency, communal luxury” (ht GEO)
Gwen Frisbie-Fulton gives a glimpse of her tightly interconnected community campaigning for affordable senior housing in North Carolina (ht GEO)
📺 Sam Nabi shares what an Indigenous Community Hub and community land trust could look like in Kitchener (🇨🇦)
Explore The Guild’s approach to Community Stewardship Trust, which focuses on neighborhood ownership of commercial real estate
Ownership on Purpose
Forbes’ Afdhel Aziz spotlights Newman’s Own Foundation 100% For Purpose Club (paywalled)
Dealflow
ICYMI: North Carolina ESOPs have been active in the M&A market this summer: Hoffman & Hoffman, an ESOP HVAC company, acquires Aeromechanical, LLC (FL) | Columbia Forest Products acquires PRO Pallet LLC (PA) | McKim & Creed, a regional engineering and geospatial services firm, acquires Davis Martin Powell (ht NCEOC)
For more, check out our Dealflow page.
Research & Insights
The latest arguments, analysis, and academic research (📚). Go deeper with our other topic-specific, spillover newsletters.
Employee Ownership
Project Equity releases two new resources:
Local Policy Toolkit: An EO Playbook for City and County Leaders, which draws on Project Equity’s local, state and federal database
Client Impact Report: Building Stronger Companies, Better Jobs and Shared Prosperity, drawing on nearly a decade of data from 23 companies
📺 Findlay-Hancock County Chamber of Commerce (OH) interviews Ginny Vanderslice (Praxis Consulting Group, Penn) and Chris Cooper (OEOC)
Beyond a sense of individual purpose, NCEO finds that employee-owned companies cultivate a shared sense of purpose in their community
🎙️ Michael Palmieri explores ESOP recruitment and retention gaps with NCEO’s Liza Shifrin on the latest Owners at Work
OEOC releases Selling Your Business to Your Employees, a strategic guide to employee ownership models by Mike Palmieri and Chris Cooper
🎙️ The Ownership Effect talks to Carla Ondrasik, author of Stop Trying!, about the importance of making room for ideas and mistakes among employe-owners
ESOPs
ESOP For Contractors breaks down how the tax breaks can leave companies with more cash on hand to run their operations
Kleinbard’s Chris Wingard analyzes the impact of the recent Retire Through Ownership Act and five companion bills on the ESOP landscape (paywalled)
NCEOC analyzes the recent growth-by-acquisition trends in their ESOPs
John Solimine (Verit Advisors) explores Financing Alternatives for New and Existing ESOPs
Aaron Dean maps ESOPs against AI exposure, finding that almost half are in industries AI touches most while 40% are in industries it touches least
Drew Bringhurst compares the trade offs of ESOPs against other exit strategies
EOTs
🇨🇦 Tallgrass Fund addresses employee FAQs about EOTs
Worker Cooperatives
🇨🇦 Sean Geobey simulates “product-market-governance fit” across different co-op models
🇬🇧 Tom Powdrill examines the exclusion of workforce from governance, arguing for a system that gives voice to those less likely to exit
🎙️ Co-op Developer Stories features US Co-ops’ Doug O’Brien on how to build a more resilient ecosystem, particularly in the care, tech and AI sectors
The Ownership Economy
How can we build a food system that works for the people who feed us? (ht Priya Fielding-Singh)
New Growth Innovation Network spotlights employee- and community ownership models as wealth-building strategies for low- and middle-income workers
Castlemaine Community Co-operative translate their community’s experience buying real estate together into a how-to guide, in partnership with Paul Ramsay Foundation
📺 Aspen Ideas: Economy 2026 releases recordings from Tulsa
Workplace democracy: What is the overlap between democratic management structures and servant leaders?
🎙️ Transform Finance drops the second episode of their new podcast Own the Block, on building power vs. just acquiring property
🎙️ The Ownership Economy speaks with Dr. Elizabeth Bennett on product labels, value-chain profit sharing, and capacity considerations of shared ownership
🇬🇧 Yoak invites community stakeholders to contribute to their new platform, Field Guide + Map on Business Design for Systemic Change
Community Ownership
📚 Degen et al. publish Which economic democracy? Towards principles for transformative democratization in socialization projects
SSIR has been on a roll: Sarah Mousa pushes against scarcity framing with Generative Philanthropy while Sadler et al. argues that Community Governance is Critical for Better Data Informed Decisions
Digital Ownership
Data Centers: Who decides for communities? Federation of American Scientists analyzes local policies and ten executed community benefits agreements
ICYMI: Aspen’s EOP explores Work and the Social Contract in the Age of AI