…Boo! From Colin:
Vampire Capitalism: Doug Lepisto argues that private equity is feeding on the “silver tsunami” of retiring owners and founders, draining ownership from small towns. Oddly, his silver bullets don’t include the people already inside the castle — the employees, who could take over through any one of many employee ownership models. Held up to a mirror, his local-investor model and employee ownership turn out to share the same goal, and worker-owned firms could carry it a step further by keeping both the profits and the decisions in the local community. It’s a sharp stake in the ground for treating succession as public policy, and a retiring owner who sells to employees may be the strongest garlic of all.
Top Shelf News
AI’s Thrall: Anthropic | ImpactAlpha’s analysis by Christoph Bietz of the S-1 filing finds the steward ownership structure “neither permanent nor fully secured”
🇳🇱 A new Dutch foundation sets out to protect and strengthen mission-driven businesses. Their first client? Ben & Jerry’s (paywalled)
👉 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.
Nov 1: Day one of The ESOP Association’s Employee Owned 26 in Las Vegas
Nov 3: Day one of the Institute for Economic Democracy’s EO Days in Brussels
Nov 4: EOT Advisors’ webinar for business owners learn about EOTs
Nov 5: Common Trust’s Steward Circle 2026, “The Rising Tide of Employee Ownership” (invite only) | Ownership Capital Lab x Transform Finance: How Investors Classify and Diligence EO Funds
Opportunities
For more, including for jobs *at* employee-owned companies, visit our Jobs page.
ROC USA | RFP – Construction Management/Project Management Office (PMO) Services – PRICE Grant
Central Coast Food Web | RFP: Newport Fishermen’s Cooperative Feasibility Study
Elysian Press | Patronage Lead
Common Wealth Think Tank | Director of Research in London | Principal Energy Economist in London
Nov 20 Deadline | RFP: Childcare Co-op Feasibility in Kansas
🗞️ Ownership News
Employee Ownership
PTON announces their second full-time staff member, Elena Noyes, and three new Board Members: Stacy Kraker (Hummingbird Wholesale), Dana Stranz (RSF), and Dave Diamond (Northern Trust) — congratulations to all!
🇬🇧 In the UK, Government appoints Andrew Pakes as the first-ever Cooperatives & Mutuals Champion (ht Menna Clarke)
Ownership on Purpose
Steward Market welcomes PurposeFused as their newest founding partner to support founders and leadership through ownership transitions
The Ownership Economy
The Democracy Collaborative debuts their Community Wealth Building Newsletter | 🇬🇧 Main Street Journal reports that Scotland makes Community Wealth Building official policy
Ownership Stories & Dealflow
ESOPs
SES tells the tale of Miller & Chitty’s (NJ) transition to 100% ESOP-owned
Co-ops
Jefferson Timber Cooperative (WA) revamps the forest industry
🇬🇧 Radical Routes, a mutual aid network that links worker co-ops with housing co-ops, celebrates 40 years (ht GEO)
🎙️ Next City’s Oscar Perry Abello reports on ChiFresh Kitchen, a network of co-ops in Chicago built by formerly incarcerated women who struggled finding jobs and homes (see below for more from Abello)
📺 Interagency Working Group on Cooperative Development profiles agricultural cooperatives who’ve operated for more than a century (ht US Co-ops)
The Ownership Economy
🎙️ Abello conducts a postmortem on NYC’s Hester Street and its engagement with neighborhood communities
📺 Liquid assets: World Within Studios tells the story of Atlantic Sea Farms, a collective effort to diversify Maine’s lobster industry for coastal communities
Ownership on Purpose
🎙️ Beyond the B releases a new episode with Rod Johnson, co-founder and Chief Values Officer of BLK & Bold, a coffee and tea brand distributing 5% of gross profits to youth programs
Dealflow
MA-based real estate developers The O’Connell Companies turn to employee ownership, with a new ESOP now holding the majority stake
Rendezvous, a Turner Falls (MA) restaurant, transition to co-op structure made up of both employees and community members
Wendler, Inc (IA), a civil construction firm, becomes 100% ESOP-owned
For more, check out our Dealflow page.
Research & Insights
The latest arguments, analysis, and academic research (📚)
Employee Ownership
📚 International Review of Applied Economics publishes special issue on employee ownership and profit sharing, with a new intro by Joseph Blasi and Jonathan Michie | IRAE also calls for papers on EO and policy
🎙️ Eric Ries, co-founder of Virgil and author of Incorruptible, discusses the benefits of EO on the wonderfully named Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots
🇨🇦 Peter Nowak finds that Canadian SMEs and their owners are undergoing a transformation, as exits are now about legacy and societal impact, not just price
ESOPs
RTOA: The ESOP Association posts an RTOA FAQs page | Corey Rosen’s analysis indicates the new RTOA bill will not dramatically alter the ESOP landscape | Certified Employee-Owned considers RTOA in the context of two other pending ESOP bills, EORA and AORA
According to Rosen, the IRS’s new employee plans compliance resolution system primarily affects inadvertent overpayments to ESOP participants
ButcherJoseph’s Rob Reavis and CURT, a non-profit organization in the construction industry, argue ownership structure should be part of contractor diligence
🇿🇦 Southern Africa Employee Ownership Association’s Sindiswa Tilane advocates for employee ownership readiness as vital to the ESOP development process
EOTs
📚🇬🇧 Preminger and Russell talk to employee-owners in the British Journal of Industrial Relations, delving into the challenges of what it means to be owners in relation to management
🎙️ 21 Hats Podcast asks Miren Oca: Since she self-financed the EOT, did she sell Ocaquatics to her employees or give it to them?
Co-ops
Shelterforce’s Steve Dubb reports on a decade of Black food co-op organizing
🇨🇦 Canada’s cooperative sector provides CA$61B capital transfusion to national GDP and supports ~746,000 jobs
Garlic and Roses crosses co-op principles 3 and 6 to arrive at cooperation through economic participation among cooperatives
Cooperative IMPACT Conference finds co-ops are not only resilient during but responsive to change and crisis
🎙️ Co-op Developer Stories by CooperationWorks! drops a new episode with Esteban Kelly on the future of the cooperative movement
The Ownership Economy
As we grapple with our relationship with technology, Marquis and Simmons argue that social connection should be reframed as civic infrastructure for the common good | SSIR’s Hau likewise makes the case for relational intelligence over artificial intelligence (paywalled)
Ownership Works posts a new edition of The Ownership Exchange, sharing the story of employee-owner Jyoti Verma and insights from AlixPartners
Economic & Workplace Democracy
💡 Laurie Lane-Zucker and Gabriel Grant, co-founder of Shareholder Democracy, discuss how investors can align their shareholder votes with organizations who share their values
Predistribution Initiative’s Tom Powdrill researches how widely worker participation varies in corporate governance, finding policy drives more change than voluntary adoption or passive provision
📚 Burkart et al. argue effective shareholder empowerment depends on shareholders’ capacity to exercise that authority in an informed way in a recent Journal of Corporate Finance paper
A new edition of Beloved Economies explores who really speaks for small businesses
📺 Kellogg College (Oxford) hosts Landé Belo on race, fairness and equality in the workplace in the age of AI
Ownership on Purpose
Steward Market releases their October edition of Notes from the Field
🇬🇧 Yoak launches Part II of their Field Guide, From Default to Design
Cordeiro and O’Brien bat around the idea of data center owned by a perpetual purpose trust in the San Diego Union-Tribune
Shared prosperity: Sandra Stewart investigates the emerging trend of purpose-driven M&A for Impact Entrepreneur
Digital Ownership
Frank McCourt offers sanguine perspective on the data-center backlash, outlining strategies to reclaim ownership of data and AI (ht Jenny Everett)
Inference Co-op is building an alternative AI model with novel approaches to governance, privacy and renewable energy
📺 At Aspen Ideas, Rutgers’ Joseph Blasi and GCV’s Santhosh Ramdoss explore Who Owns the AI Boom with Aspen’s Ida Rademacher
✌️ See you next week
One final thanks to Big Table Institute for the shout out in their newsletter this week!
P.S. Dear US Readers—Since some say voice and agency are the lifeblood of democracy, don’t forget to vote!