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Employee ownership - the future?
More business owners than ever are selling their commercial creations to staff. Alison Coleman explores the benefits of employee ownership – and the model’s resilience to disruption
When a business founder was looking to move on from their company, options would historically include trade sales and management buy-outs (MBO). Today a growing number are moving to employee ownership (EO).
EO is a unique form of industrial democracy pioneered in 1929 by John Spedan Lewis when he transferred ownership of his company, John Lewis, to its employees. Since then, well-known names such as Lush Cosmetics and Richer Sounds have made the same transition to giving their staff a larger stake in the future of the company they have helped to build.