Guides

A guide to the Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) for business owners.

Download our Guide to Employee Ownership Trusts for Law Firms.

Download our Guide to the Employee Ownership Trust (EOT) for Accountants to help with your clients.

Employee ownership and business recovery

1. More engaged and committed employees
2. Building a clear shared purpose and collaborative way of working
3. Ownership succession which preserves your business and its culture
4. A stronger performing business
5. A committment to the longer term
6. Leadership succession can be implemented over time
7. Retiring owners can be paid market value for their shares
8. Tax reliefs for retiring owners and employees alike
9. Enhanced returns for investors
10. Employee ownership can be implemented at a pace which matches that of any retiring owners.

Employee ownership may be one of the greatest business succession solutions you’ve never heard of.

Establishing an employee ownership trust to buy out retiring owners is increasingly popular.

Companies in the news recently for transitioning to employee ownership include

• Richer Sounds
• Riverford Organics
• Aardman Animations (the makers of Wallace and Gromit)

Not only does it often solve the kinds of succession problem that many owners face, it creates a strong platform for continued success and growth through having engaged and motivated new owners and brings statutory tax reliefs for both retiring owners and employees.

 To read more click here

Through a detailed investigation of your business and objectives, we will help you make the best decision.

There are three main forms of employee ownership:

• Individual share ownership
• A combination of trust and individual ownership (hybrid)
• Trust ownership

Generally, trust ownership will be simpler both to set up and run. But this does not make it the automatic best choice for all companies

Which of these will be the best solution will depend on your company and its employees. To help you decide click here for more information

Employee ownership is reported to be the fastest growing form of business ownership in the UK.

An increasing number of business owners planning retirement are arranging for their employees to take over the ownership and entrepreneurs creating new businesses are seeing the advantages that employee ownership can bring for business growth.

Whilst large businesses such as John Lewis are high profile examples of successful employee-owned companies, there is a large and growing number of smaller companies – in diverse sectors – that are also employee-owned.

To read a detailed guide to becoming an employee owned company click here

A trust under which property (very often shares in the company which the employees work for, but sometimes also cash) is held on their behalf.  More information can be found here  Employee Benefit Trust (EBT)

If you are unsure whether employee ownership is right for your company look at this list of employee-owned companies for examples from many and varying business sectors.

Click here for more information and to buy The Employee Ownership Manual

A guide to hybrid employee ownership

A guide to individual share ownership

A guide to the Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI)

A guide to the Company Share Option Plan (CSOP)

A guide to Growth Shares

A guide to the Long Term Incentive Plan (LTIP)

A guide to Save As You Earn (SAYE)

A guide to the Share Incentive Plan (SIP)

A guide to Restricted Shares

A guide to the Joint Share Ownership Plan (JSOP)

A guide to Share Purchase

A guide to ESOP

A guide to ESPP 

A Glossary for terms used can be found here