239 pages
evolution 2006-2020
main findings of census 2020
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
ownership control
listed companies
employee-owned
non-listed
companies
and much more

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

The new Annual Economic Survey of Employee Share Ownership in 2020 reveals a new progression towards employee share ownership in Europe last year, even during this new crisis.

The upward trend in the number of employee shareholders continues, with 7.1 million people in large companies (Graph 1). If we add one million employee shareholders in SMEs, the total number in Europe reaches 8.1 million.

Together they held 310 billion Euro in May 2020, down from 350 billion a year earlier. This was the first shock of the pandemic crisis. Since then, however, many perspectives have changed and at the beginning of 2021, European employees hold 420 billion Euro in shares in their companies, a record figure never reached before.

The development of employee share ownership has continued in large European companies in 2020. More and more of them are organizing employee share plans. In 2020, 94% of all large European companies had employee share ownership, on which 88% had employee share plans of all kinds, while 53% had "broad-based" plans for all employees, and 60% had stock option plans. Finally, 29% of all large European companies launched new employee share plans, a proportion that tends to increase from year to year.

The pandemic crisis is far from being the first crisis experienced by European employee share ownership. For the more than 50 years that employee share plans have been tested in large European companies, crises of all kinds have occurred repeatedly. Each time, the scenario of malicious interpretations and warnings is the same: "we told you so", "it's far too risky", "this time it's done, employee share ownership is dead". Yet the facts are there: For more than 50 years, European employee share ownership has not ceased to confound the naysayers. The more employee ownership spreads, the more it is supported.

Graph 1

Graph 2

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"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."