213 pages
evolution 2006-2018
main findings of census 2018
more than 100 tables and graphs
democratization rate in various countries
list of all most remarkable companies
ordinary employees and top executives
employee representation on boards
discrimination in voting rights
listed companies
employee-owned
non-listed
companies
and much more

Not just a sample but an exhaustive picture based on the EFES database (the 2.750 European companies gathering 95% of employment in all European listed companies).

in partnership with

New record year for employee share ownership in Europe, with nearly 400 billion Euro held by employees in their company or 3.11%.

More and more European companies are organizing employee share plans. In 2018, 94.2% of all large European companies had employee share ownership, on which 87.3% had employee share plans of all kinds, while 52.3% had "broad-based" plans for all employees, and 62.3% had stock option plans. Their number increased by 3 to 4% on average each year since 2006, a solid growth. Finally, 33.4% of all large European companies launched new employee share plans, a proportion that increases from year to year.

The rise is back for the number of employee shareholders, with 7.5 million people in large European companies; if we add one million employee shareholders in SMEs, the total figure reaches 8.5 million.

However, the decline in the democratization rate of employee share ownership has still to be stopped.

Following the crisis, some European countries (including the UK) had chosen for stronger incentive policies, promoting employee share ownership and long term savings as an investment for the future. Instead of that, some other countries (including France) had chosen to reduce public spending and to support household consumption, while incentives for long term savings and for employee share ownership were sacrificed.

This had a strong impact on the democratization rate of employee share ownership in Europe (the proportion of employee shareholders amongst all employees), leading to a divorce between continental Europe and the UK. A sharp drop below 20% was observed on the continent. On the contrary, the democratization rate had risen to more than 25% in the UK.

After the negative phase from 2009 to 2013, policy decisions are positive again in most European countries. This led to a rebound of the democratization rate to 38% in France  following the "Macron Law", illustrating the high elasticity of employee share ownership to fiscal incentives.

"Wow, what a great work. Congratulations. That's very helpful for our activities!"

"Salve vi invio la mia tesi magistrale sull'azionariato dei dipendenti in Italia e vi ringrazio perché dal vostro lavoro ho potuto prendere spunti interessanti."

"Anyway thanks to you and your hard work, and your wonderful reports - I am an associate professor now, so thank you very much for your help. Now I am preparing this version in English, so I try to put the most recent data."

"That's really great work! Congratulations and thank you. I think the survey is very helpful for the discussion here in Germany. We will publish it on our homepage and distribute the paper in our network. Best wishes"

"Merci pour ce travail récurrent si précieux !"

"Remarkable work ! Thanks and congratulation".

"Nous sommes en phase de finalisation du texte concernant une saisine au CESE en France. Votre publication pourrait nous être fort utile."

"Muchas gracias por la información y felicitaciones..."

"I would be very eager to update my analysis based on new data."

"Can you provide data on individual companies, e.g. in an excel spread sheet, so we can see which companies have stock options? This would be very useful for our statistical analysis."

"Sans votre soutien précieux, en m'aidant à constituer la base de données statistiques ayant permis la réalisation des deux études quantitatives longitudinales de l'impact de l'actionnariat salarié sur la performance des grandes entreprises françaises cotées, ma thèse n'aurait pas pu voir le jour."