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Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

themarysue.com

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Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#11

Post by mygo »

nightski wrote: post #6

Sorry for the naive question, but how does this work? So let's say the employees now are part of this trust which owns 75% of the shares. What is the benefit? The trust owns the shares legally correct? Is it some sort of profit sharing scheme? I assume you don't hold on to the shares when you leave the company (as they are with the trust)? Does every new hire dilute the ownership? How does this actually impact the da…

I worked with some consultants who did this sort of thing for companies, and their main spiel was...

Sometimes a company’s owners have no one to pass their ownership down to (not having kids or their kids not wanting to take on the family business, etc). So they either sell the business off or do layoffs and liquidate and move on.

There have been instances where companies that employed a good amount of people in a town shut down due to this.

Making a company employee-owned is one way to keep it alive and operational. Sometimes it’s a better option than selling the ownership to a third party.

But then again that was just their sales pitch.

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#13

Post by bsimpson »

mygo wrote: post #11
nightski wrote: post #6

Sorry for the naive question, but how does this work? So let's say the employees now are part of this trust which owns 75% of the shares. What is the benefit? The trust owns the shares legally correct? Is it some sort of profit sharing scheme? I assume you don't hold on to the shares when you leave the company (as they are with the trust)? Does every new hire dilute the ownership? How does this actually impact the da…

I worked with some consultants who did this sort of thing for companies, and their main spiel was... Sometimes a company’s owners have no one to pass their ownership down to (not having kids or their kids not wanting to take on the family business, etc). So they either sell the business off or do layoffs and liquidate and move on. There have been instances where companies that employed a good amount of people in a to…

Bob's Red Mill did the same thing:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob's_Red_Mill

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#14

Post by fabianhjr »

nightski wrote: post #6

Sorry for the naive question, but how does this work? So let's say the employees now are part of this trust which owns 75% of the shares. What is the benefit? The trust owns the shares legally correct? Is it some sort of profit sharing scheme? I assume you don't hold on to the shares when you leave the company (as they are with the trust)? Does every new hire dilute the ownership? How does this actually impact the da…

Hey, essentially this means that stakeholders are now the shareholders. In other words, they now became a worker-cooperative; they are the 1 in 8 worldwide that don't sell their time and surplus value.

Union-Cooperative Strategy: https://newsyndicalist.org/2017/09/30/union-cooperative-stra...

International Cooperative Alliance: https://www.ica.coop/en

Mondragon Cooperative: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mwwq3ujkfkU

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#16

Post by mygo »

bsimpson wrote: post #13
mygo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with some consultants who did this sort of thing for companies, and their main spiel was... Sometimes a company’s owners have no one to pass their ownership down to (not having kids or their kids not wanting to take on the family business, etc). So they either sell the business off or do layoffs and liquidate and move on. There have been instances where companies that employed a good amount of people in a to…

Bob's Red Mill did the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob's_Red_Mill

ah there we go, ESOP. Not to be mistaken with a cooperative.

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#18

Post by satya71 »

mygo wrote: post #16
bsimpson wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bob's Red Mill did the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob's_Red_Mill

ah there we go, ESOP. Not to be mistaken with a cooperative.

New Belgium is also owned by employees via ESOP. What is the practical difference between ESOP ownership and cooperative?

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#19

Post by carapace »

bsimpson wrote: post #13
mygo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked with some consultants who did this sort of thing for companies, and their main spiel was... Sometimes a company’s owners have no one to pass their ownership down to (not having kids or their kids not wanting to take on the family business, etc). So they either sell the business off or do layoffs and liquidate and move on. There have been instances where companies that employed a good amount of people in a to…

Bob's Red Mill did the same thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob's_Red_Mill

Also Windings electromagnetic co in Minnesota.

https://www.windings.com/about-us/

> Windings is a leader in the design, test, manufacture and support of custom electric motors, generators and related components including rotors, stators, lamination stacks and insulation systems.

> Windings business structure was converted to an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) in 1998 and we have been 100% employee owned since 2008.

Re: Aardman Animation Is Giving the Company to Their Employees

#20

Post by Alex3917 »

satya71 wrote: post #18
mygo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ah there we go, ESOP. Not to be mistaken with a cooperative.

New Belgium is also owned by employees via ESOP. What is the practical difference between ESOP ownership and cooperative?

An ESOP is used to allow the owners to sell their stock to employees. The owners benefit by getting a tax break, and the employees benefit because they're allowed to pay for the stock out of the future earnings of the company rather than needing to pay out of pocket. Most co-ops are formed using ESOPs, but not every company that does an ESOP becomes a co-op. For example, a company could just sell 20% of its stock to its employees but still remain largely owner controlled.

Even if you start a company knowing you want it to be a co-op, the best practice is currently just make it a C Corp and keep it that way until it's profitable and stable and no longer growing quickly. Unfortunately there currently aren't really good ways to finance co-ops, so creating a traditional company and then later converting it via an ESOP seems to be the recommended practice. I think there are some people working on better alternatives, but I don't follow the space super closely.

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