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John Spedan Lewis
Born
Spedan Lewis, son of the founder of the John Lewis shop on Oxford Street, decided the gap between his family's income and his staff's was unjust. He transferred the business into a trust in two stages, in 1929 and 1950, so that it is owned on behalf of all its employees, called Partners, who share profits through an annual bonus and have elected councils. It is the largest employee-owned business in Britain, and its recent years of losses and restructuring show ownership alone does not guarantee success.
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Ernest Bader
Bader, a Swiss-born Quaker, built the resin and chemicals company Scott Bader in Northamptonshire and in 1951 gave most of it to the Scott Bader Commonwealth, a charity in which employees are members, completing the transfer in 1963. Employees elect members to the board and decide how part of the profits go to charity. The company still trades internationally under that structure, which makes it one of the longest-running tests of the idea.
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Ove Arup
Born
Arup's firm engineered the Sydney Opera House and the Centre Pompidou. He set out his principles in a 1970 speech to partners, and in 1977 the firm's shares were placed in trusts held for the benefit of its employees. Arup has stayed independent ever since, with staff sharing in profits, and grew into one of the world's largest engineering consultancies. It shows how a professional firm can avoid being sold off when its founders retire.
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George W. Jenkins
Born
Jenkins opened the first Publix supermarket in Florida in 1930 and from the start offered employees shares, later through a formal stock ownership plan. Today Publix is the largest employee-owned company in the United States, with current and former staff holding the great majority of its stock. Low staff turnover and strong customer service scores are the operating evidence that ownership changed behaviour on the shop floor.
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Bill Gore
Bill Gore left DuPont in 1958 and founded W. L. Gore & Associates with his wife Genevieve in their Delaware basement. The company, best known for Gore-Tex, has no conventional job titles, and its staff are called associates and own a substantial share of the company through a stock ownership plan, alongside the Gore family. It is a case where ownership was paired with an unusual flat structure from the start.
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Louis O. Kelso
Born
Kelso was a San Francisco lawyer and economist rather than a company founder, but he designed the employee stock ownership plan, first used in 1956 to let employees of the Peninsula Newspapers buy the business from its retiring owners. He then lobbied for the 1974 law that gave ESOPs tax advantages in the US. Almost every American entry on this list used the mechanism he invented.
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Eileen Fisher
Eileen Fisher sold a stake in her clothing company to an employee stock ownership plan in 2006 and added more later, so staff hold a substantial minority while she keeps the rest. It falls short of full employee control, which is worth knowing, but employees have a real financial stake and seats in decision-making, and she has said the company will not be sold to an outside buyer.
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Julian Richer
Richer opened the first Richer Sounds hi-fi shop at London Bridge, pictured in its early days, at nineteen, and built a chain known for staff schemes such as holiday homes for employees and suggestion bonuses. In 2019 he transferred 60 per cent of the company to an employee ownership trust and gave staff a cash payment for each year worked. He kept a minority stake, so this is a majority transfer rather than a full one.
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Guy Singh-Watson
Singh-Watson started delivering organic vegetable boxes, like the one pictured, from his family's farm in Devon and built Riverford into a national delivery business. Rather than sell to an investor, he moved it into employee ownership in 2018, with a trust taking around three quarters of the shares at a valuation he said was well below what a buyer would pay. It is a clear example of a founder accepting less money to keep a company independent.
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Peter Lord
Born
Lord co-founded the Bristol animation studio Aardman, maker of Wallace and Gromit, with David Sproxton in the 1970s. In 2018 the two transferred a majority of the company to an employee ownership trust, explaining that they wanted it to stay independent and in Bristol rather than be sold to a larger media group. The founders remain involved, and the studio has continued making films and series since.
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