Welcome Back! From Colin:
In Labor Innovation this week, Daniel Massey of Expanding ESOPs and Steve Storkan of the Employee Ownership Expansion Network give a rundown of state-level policies intended to spark more employee ownership.
It’s hard to look at the expansion of EO centers, greater subsidies for EO conversions, explicit preferences for procurement from EO companies, and other developments as anything but positive. One bite at a time.
But as academic researchers, we’re always looking for questions to ask. How will they affect the growth of different types of ownership? Which of these initiatives will move the needle the most? How will we measure that? Things move slowly in Policy Research Land — be sure to check back in 5-10 years 😉
Top Shelf News
Captrust of North Carolina, which has both private equity investors and an ESOP with roughly $215M held in the ESOP trust and 1,700 participants, acquired the Hoge-Barrett Group, a financial advising firm managing $3B in assets
From the article: “Brett Hoge could have taken private money and launched his own firm. Instead, the Winston-Salem, North Carolina-based advisor brought his $3 billion team to Captrust Financial Advisors, drawn largely by the chance for his staff to own equity in the mega-RIA giant”
Aspen Institute’s Economic Opportunities Program published What Employee Ownership Means to Workers, insights cleaned from 85 employees at ESOPs, employee ownership trusts, worker cooperatives, and private equity-owned companies
President Trump signed Retire Through Ownership Act into law (see our recent Bootleggers and Baptists newsletter for our own musings and links to others’)
👉 In This Issue
If you’re new here, friend, welcome! You may want to start with Stories & Dealflow.
Events and Opportunities
News
Stories and Dealflow
Research and Insights
🏙️ Events and Opportunities
For events more than a week away, see our main Events page.
Oct 17: Venture for Canada hosts the Canada Succession Summit in Calgary | Day one of the New York Cooperative Summit in Schenectady, NY
Oct 19: Ownership Capital Lab’s Innovation in EO Holding Companies | Day one of ICA Group’s 10th Annual National Home Care Cooperative Conference in Tacoma, WA | Christopher Marquis’ Purpose as the End, Not the Means in Amsterdam
Oct 20: The Business Council of Co-operatives and Mutuals’ BCCM Leaders’ Summit in Sydney | Day one of Employee Ownership Canada’s Canadian Employee Ownership Conference | Day one of the Opportunity Finance Network’s OFN42 conference in New Orleans, LA | Social Nest Foundation‘s The Gap in Between conference in Valencia, Spain | TXCEO hosts P. Terry’s Chooses EO to Preserve our Lonestar Legacy | Doughnut Economics Action Lab hosts DEAL Intersections
Oct 21: Austin Cooperative Business Association’s Co-Opportunity Fair in Austin, TX | SEWN and Steel Valley Authority host PaCEO’s Kevin McPhillips on Succession Planning | OEOC’s From Study to Strategy: Building a Liquidity Framework for ESOPs
Oct 22: EOT 101 Webinar with Common Trust and PaCEO | HBS explores EO’s impact on cost cutting with Emory’s Kaylee Kimbrough | NCEO’s Preparing Stronger ESOP Projections
Oct 23: Association of Cooperative Educators General Meeting
Opportunities
For more, including for jobs *at* employee-owned companies, visit our Jobs page.
New Majority Capital | Deal Sourcing Associate
GitLab Foundation | Managing Director, Collaborative Capital
Oct 30 | Deadline to apply for PennPac Spring 2027 nonprofit projects
Dec 15 | Deadline to join 2027 Cohort of Impact Peers, a community for mission-driven leaders
🗞️ Ownership News
Employee Ownership
ICA, Legacoop and Fondazione PICO host inaugural Cooperative AI Bootcamp in Rome, asking how the co-op movement can inform governance and development
🇦🇺 Trusts x Taxes: Australia proposes new tax laws that exempt employee share trusts; will employee ownership trusts be named next? (ht Alan Greig)
ICYMI: Unlock Ownership invests in the Fund for Jobs Worth Owning
The Ownership Economy
Capital Infrastructure: Mission Driven Finance formalizes partnership with Built, Fund as a Service, to scale private market solutions to community challenges
📺 Jon Stewart interviews labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards — we drop you in around 37 minutes, on how workers can share in the prosperity they catalyzed
Ownership Stories & Dealflow
ESOPs | The Fabricator’s Tim Heston examines how ESOPs can impact manufacturing through the story of Metalworking Solutions (TN) | PaCEO profiles social services company JusticeWorks | 🎙️ Menke’s ESOP Radio explores why ISEC, a CO contractor, transitioned from direct employee ownership and management incentives to minority ESOP | Employe-owner Austin Evans (TN) of 5by5 Agency shares what ownership means to him and for the community
The Ownership Economy | Barber-Campbell and Rousseau report how unionized employee-owners fought for a co-worker’s promotion at Hunger Mountain Co-op (ht GEO)
Ownership on Purpose | B The Change returns with a new edition, featuring an interview with employee-owner Madeline Barr of Resonant Energy
Dealflow | 🇬🇧 Rebellion Beer Company transitions to EOT ahead of 2027 crowdfunding campaign
For more, check out our Dealflow page.
Research & Insights
The latest arguments, analysis, and academic research (📚)
Employee Ownership | 🇬🇧 For Property Week’s Tim Clark, EO changes how employees network with clients, changes their attitudes and changes their career trajectories | 📚 People’s Capitalism: NYU’s Hans Taparia and Bruce Buchanan upcoming book frames employee ownership as generative economic development | Corey Rosen highlights the non-financial benefits of EO | Beltran-Figueroa et al. research employee outcomes in US ESOPs and worker co-ops (paywalled)
ESOPs | Prairie Capital’s Franco Silva on how construction companies can protect bonding capacity during an ESOP Deal | 📺 Gary Gray examines ESOPs for the hospitality industry at LendingCon
Co-ops | ICA reflects on how cooperative law can preserve culture and identity while adapting to socioeconomic and technological changes | 🎙️ Co-op Developer Stories interviews Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard | Gabrielle Newell reports on DC City Council briefing on community wealth building | 🎙️ Jerome Nikolai Warren drops textbook-as-podcast episode linking co-ops, sustainable development and environmental protection | 🇨🇦 ICYMI: Sengupta’s research connects Canadian co-ops, economic development, colonization and indigenous cultures. | Juri et al. analyze modern employee-buyout innovations and trade offs in scaling cooperatives
The Ownership Economy | 📚 Christian Felber releases updated edition of his book, Economy for the Common Good | Digital Commons Cooperative links to a litany of resources for the ownership data behind real estate and housing | Newton and Ruroede propose credit union strategies to support shared equity models in housing | SSIR’s Chana R. Schoenberger reports new research building on how profit sharing redistributes wealth
Economic & Workplace Democracy | The Democracy Collaborative celebrates 20 years of Community Wealth Building in essays | Erel Onojobi argues that owning an asset isn’t the same as changing the economy | Thomasson and Hallonsten trace the history of municipally owned corporations in Sweden | Nonprofit Quarterly’s Ben Palmquist explores democracy beyond elections
Ownership on Purpose | ImpactAlpha analyzes the capital stack and stakeholders behind ‘Trustworthy AI’ (paywalled) | 📺 Postlethwaite investigates why more purpose-driven companies are combining B Corp with employee ownership:
✌️ See you next week
One final thanks to Rebecca Kern for the shout out at SOCAP this week, following her ImpactAlpha article on the long term benefits of the ownership economy (paywalled)